Certain Parts of Brooklyn
by MegK1978
Summary: After Sunnyhell does the way of Hiroshima, newly minted Slayers appear in New York City, as is a vampire who knows magic and is powered by the First Itself-- Willow, Kennedy, Spike, and the Cattlano family. Chaos ensues.
1. Prologue: The Army of Darkness

Female author's note: Please ignore EVERYTHING after Season 2 of Angel; I screwed it up royally by resurrecting Allen Francis Doyle against the wishes of the Almighty Whedon. Everything that happened after Season 5 of Buffy stays that way.

Male author's note. No lesbians are to be offended in the reading of this story. Trust me, I've been hit on by enough lesbians to respect them… and I swear to God, I wish I were joking about being hit on by lesbians. THEY'RE THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO HAVE! In any event, you can either enjoy the story or sue me, do one or the other, but just start reading. Also, read Tales of the Slayer, Volume 2, the story "The New Watcher," for certain Civil War References.

"**There are certain parts of Brooklyn**…"

**Prologue: The Army of Darkness**

**May,** **2002**

Marco Cattalano walked through the streets of Sunnydale, annoyed again. There had been an earthquake, which meant one thing, and it wasn't tectonic activity.

_Another damn apocalypse._

He spotted the target house, and stopped dead. There was yellow crime scene tape all over the front of the building.

_We are not amused_. He reached for one of his numerous knives. If anyone in that house was dead, hurt, or even scratched a little, he was going to make somebody pay.

Slowly.

He ran to the front door and pounded it with two efficient hammer-blows that shook the house.

The front door opened before Marco could kick it in. Anya, the local blonde vengeance demon with _way _too much cleavage, snapped, "What are you doing here? Go away, we're recovering."

Marco slammed his palm on the door before she could close it on him. "From what?"

He heard a groan inside and stepped in, past Anya, glancing at the couch. "Tall dark and British, what are you doing back from the great divide?"

Rupert Giles looked at him, supine on the couch. "Oh, Marco. No one's eaten you yet? Pity. I'm just here to avert the end of the world. Nothing new."

"Nice to see it was handled. Who was the bother this time?"

"Willow."

Marco pivoted out of the way of Dawn Summers, who came out of the kitchen with a tray of…tea stuff? _Oy…wait a second._

"Willow as in the redhead? _My_ Willow? What the heck happened here this time?" Marco stopped and examined Dawn. She was freshly cleaned, as though her hair had finished drying not long ago. "What did she do to you _now_? Or were you in the Magic Box when the earthquake hit?"

"More like when Willow hit it," Giles replied. "You might want to sit down."

"Why?"

With a cold voice, Dawn pronounced, "Tara's dead."

Marco's eyes went cold, flat, dead, and very scary. "Who should I kill?"

"You're a little late for that one, too," Anya griped.

By the end of the story, Marco sighed. "Now what happens to her?"

"I'll take her back with me to England; make sure that she can control her power. She'll need the training, the discipline in order to master all of this."

Marco nodded thoughtfully. "Well then, you think she can tolerate me in the neighborhood? I didn't cancel my Marshall Scholarship, so I'll hitch a ride…for the summer and next semester. As long as it takes for her to get better."

"Why?" Anya asked. "It's not like you have a chance to get laid."

He merely looked at her. "It's what she needs me to be…there for her. And there I will be."

**Eight Months Later**.

Marco looked out of his airplane window, cursing the darkness outside. _Why do I always have to arrive in SunnyHell in the dark? Why me? Did I do something to offend You, Lord?_

He picked up his luggage, and prayed very hard that his ride would be there, and hadn't been turned into a snack along the way.

"This the bruiser we want?"

Marco flicked his eyes left. He dropped his bags, whirled, and grabbed the woman approaching him. He lifted her up in the air like she was a leaf, a moment before kissing her.

His broad smile caught the light as he let Willow down on the floor. "Um, hi, Marco."

"How are you, sexy lady?"

Willow, who never really knew what to do with him, said, "Ah, good. Marco, I'd like to you meet one of the Potentials, Kennedy—"

He blinked. "The what?"

"Potentials," the olive-skinned brunette said. "Potential Slayers. We're being hunted down by the First Evil, how are you?"

He glanced the woman up and down, finding her very attractive. He sighed. "I'm depressed, you're probably a lesbian."

Her eyes narrowed. "You see a strong woman and you think she's gay all the time?"

He shook his head. "No, I find you sexy and attractive, therefore, you're gay. It keeps happening to me—the last woman I asked out was Willow." He smiled. "By the way, if someone is hunting you folks down, should you be out here?"

"We've got backup."

They walked Marco outside to a large black SUV with a pale skinned brunette leaning against the side door. Her deep brown eyes lit up as she looked over Marco's body. He smiled. "You must be Faith, I could smell the hormones."

She smiled. "Yeah, and you must be Marco; I can smell the attitude."

"That may just be my aftershave. What's up?"

"We're going to take you round the house, and then we're going to pack you out of here."

"Charming."

Marco carefully stepped around the minefield of women in the Summers' house. "Cozy," he muttered.

Willow tapped him on the shoulder and pointed down. He nodded and headed for the basement.

An hour later, he looked around, a half smile on his face. "So Spike has a soul, and he's just been deprogrammed from a trigger put in him by the dark side, the principal of the new high school is the son of a Slayer who likes to play stake the vamp, the First Evil wants to unleash a hoard of super vampires upon the world, not to mention having a right hand man dressed as a Catholic priest, and this place has become an armed camp filled with Potentials because we obviously like being an easy target. Have I missed something?"

"We're also the only people in town who haven't run screaming for the hills yet," Anya stated.

"Ah, yes, and why is that? That's right, we're the good guys. Except for me, of course, who you want to leave town so he doesn't get hurt. Sorry, I don't bite; I'm on my way back to the University, my dorm, and my own bed."

"Marco!" a voice snapped at him in the middle of the night. "Get up!"

Cattalano's eyes snapped open. Buffy was at his bedside. "We need to go, now!"

Marco was up, fully dressed, with a knife in his hand. "What is it?"

"No time, we have to go, now!"

He stopped, glanced at the door, fully locked and bolted. "You're really not all that omniscient, are you?"

He kicked out, his foot going through Buffy's chest. He smiled broadly as he pulled his leg back. "Wow, you is stupid."

The First smiled. "Glad to meet you, Marco. I've had my eye on you for some time. I've always wanted to meet you."

"Sure, and your minions are outside, waiting to come in?"

"Why would they?" she asked in an innocent voice.

"Because I'm a scary bastard, otherwise you wouldn't waste your time. I'm honored to know you think I'm a threat."

"Threat? To me? Really, now what sort of talk is that?"

"The sort where I know that you can be beaten, otherwise, you wouldn't be harassing anyone, you'd just come out and strike, simple as that. You want to soften us up, wear us down, so you can kill us then, and only then." He shook his head. "Which means you're terrified."

"Let's find out," she said. "You always said you are what you're needed to be. Well, I need you dead!"

An axe hit the door, to get only a clang. Marco grinned. "This is _my_ room. I made modifications last year."

The windows smashed in as two Bringers swung in. They landed on a rug which disappeared out from under them as they fell through the floor, onto spikes in the room below.

"You mean you didn't see Xander install that over the weekend? For shame, you really must keep a better eye on people."

Her eyes narrowed. "But you just heard about me! I was in the basement, listening—"

He grinned. "Learn about e-mail. You have just been suckered. Besides, I lived in England for months; you think I didn't _notice_ Watcher Central being blown up?"

The door fell in, and it was followed by a dozen Bringers, all of whom with knives, and two of them had axes in addition. They swarmed, taking up positions all around the room as he backed against the window, keeping the bed between him and them.

"You really have watched me, haven't you? Didn't bring your priest?"

The First shrugged. "He wasn't needed. I contacted another friend of yours, Mikhail's brother. He's upset with you."

Marco sighed. The first master vampire his family had destroyed was Mikhail the Bear, a loud Russian vampire with an attitude. Who knew he had a family?

"Well, he'll be a little heartbroken. I won't be here."

Marco flipped backwards over the windowsill and out the window, grabbing the Bringer's rope along the way. As he controlled his descent with one hand, he pulled out a cell phone with the other and hit autodial 1. The number was that of a beeper in his room, which was attached to a detonator, which was attached to large quantities of nitroglycerin, which turned his room into a fireball.

The First stood there, where the floor used to be, saying "I hate him."

Marco landed on the ground. _Imagine what would have happened had they tried me in the chem lab._

He dove into the bushes, grabbing his gym bag filled with weapons. There wasn't exactly anything he could do besides run very fast. There was no way in hell that he could have had somebody outside waiting for him, otherwise the annoying little eyeless bozos would have spotted them and the plan would be cooked. The thing is, the First apparently had a way of making even more Bringers, so killing all of them would only slow it down for a little.

_Doesn't mean we can't make it a cripple for a short time. And frankly, someone had to have heard that blast. This isn't like it's a large town. One Starbucks indeed…_

Marco heard something and glanced left. More Bringers…how many, he couldn't tell. Directly ahead of him were the woods. He stopped and reached into the bag, slowly putting it on the ground before he withdrew two small, triple crossbows, firing all six before the first one could lunge.

_Who says the bad guys have to draw first?_ he thought as he dropped the crossbows and drew knives from sheaths at his hips, nailing two more in the center of their chests.

Marco whirled around, drawing two knives from his sleeves. There were more Bringers. He glanced over his shoulder. Even more Bringers.

_Isn't this a scene from the _Kill Bill _commercials?_

"You killed my brother, _da_?" asked a deep voice.

Marco glanced over his other shoulder to find a large vampire backlit by the flames of his dying room. He had a sinking feeling that he was dead—knives couldn't be thrown faster than a vampire could move, he couldn't grab another weapon fast enough without being rushed and crushed. There was only one option left.

He ran for the woods.

The vampire's laughter followed him, and the vamp was about to follow himself, when Marco whirled in mid step and hurled a knife at his bag.

The impact set off the nitroglycerin within, turning the contents into shrapnel, killing Bringers all around and turning the vampire into a pincushion without turning him to dust, driving him off his feet.

Cattalano kept whirling, and ran straight into the woods. A Bringer leapt out, knife held high. Marco sidestepped, letting the Bringer jump past him, and he drove his other wooden dagger into the Bringer's back, around where it should have had its kidney. It fell forward as he grabbed its knife out of its hand and pivoted, blocking a knife jab from behind with one blade, stabbing into a throat with the other. He leapt back over the dead body, grabbed a second knife and continued to run through the woods.

_Come on, pal, you've taken out thousand-year-old vampires, you can take these twerps._

He tripped over a rock in time to avoid being decapitated. He thrust his knife at the axe-wielding Bringer, going right into its stomach. He landed on his shoulder and rolled, hurling the other knife out into the darkness. A figure fell over, and he hoped he didn't kill a pedestrian. He rolled back, grabbed the axe, and rolled to his feet.

A knife wielder leapt in front of him, and Marco promptly slammed the butt of the axe into his face, and promptly gave him the axe. Another Bringer landed in front of him, and on either side, grabbing his arms and lifting him off the ground. He threw his arms out to either side of him; while that couldn't shake the Bringers, it released the squirt guns in his sleeves. He fired into their faces, and they fell back in pain. He drew both of them down upon the Bringer in front of him, still firing. The Bringer's mouth opened in a scream as the hydrochloric acid burned away the sealant on his mouth and the rest burned his face off.

Marco shook the squirt guns clear of any droplets and tucked the weapons away, grabbing the knives from the ground.

He straightened…ten Bringers were in front of him

_Do they breed these guys to spring up like weeds?_

Marco hurled the knives in front of him, the maneuver throwing the guns into his hands. As the knives reached their twin targets, he started firing at the other eight Bringers. They dodged out of the way with ease.

_Come on, Buffy, save my life._

Something slammed him, hard. He dropped one gun without resistance. He looked at his shoulder, only to find an arrow sticking out of it. "Ah, damn."

Marco slowly turned, only to have his knees buckle. He fell with his back to the tree, sliding to the ground.

A Bringer stood over him. It dropped the bow and pulled out a knife.

Marco snarled, and raised his other weapon. "Die."

His hand convulsed around the handle, spraying the Bringer over and over until it fell back. He looked at the level of acid he had left. He was out.

_And there's still over half a dozen Bringers out there. I'm screwed._

Marco dropped his gun, reaching for another knife. He stopped and smiled, realizing that the others were all his turpentine-soaked throwing knives with firecrackers attached.

_You guys are about to become an environmental disaster._

He hurled it over his shoulder, and heard a pop, followed by the sound of fire burning.

He reached for another as he slowly pushed off the ground, onto his feet.

"You really don't know when to quit, do you?" said the Buffy look-alike standing before him.

He straightened. "That's something we have in common. Don't you ever shut up?"

"Not when you have as much time on your hands as I do."

"You don't have hands. Not real ones."

"An oversight." It smiled. "On your part," she added as Bringers drifted all around her, converging on him. "These are my hands, and they'll do quite well to shred you."

"Right." Marco grabbed a pen from his pocket with his left hand. With one quick move he broke left and rammed the pen into the nearest Bringer's eye and into the brain. He lashed out with a back-kick from his right leg, kicking one bringer in the throat behind him.

With a ferocious growl, two Bringers had their heads cut off with the single silver swipe of a sword, and the sword ended up embedded in the sides of two Bringers, pinning them to a tree before Spike leapt through the First and slammed into even more Bringers, pummeling them mercilessly. Three Bringers stepped forward, only to have arrows appear in their chests.

"Catch!" Faith screamed.

Marco caught, with his left hand, a bottle of hair spray. He smiled, flicked a lighter with his right hand, and let the spray catch the flame, turning it into a flamethrower, incinerating any Bringer that came near him.

"Oh, now this is disappointing," the First said.

Marco glared. "Shut up!"

The Bringers had the sense to run, and Cattalano smiled. With any luck, he would make it back in time to catch his flight to New York.

And he did.


	2. The Quickening

**Chapter One: The Quickening**

**New York City**

**Four Months later**

**(Or, May, 2003, for those who can't do the math)**

Cassie Cattalano had been receiving regular e-mails from Dawn Summers since the day Willow Rosenberg had taken her near-apocalyptic turn in the dark side. She read excited notes about her training with her sister, Vampire Slayer-in-residence of Sunnydale, CA; of the return of Spike, new soul in place and driving him insane; of Giles' return, with a small, growing army of potential Slayers in tow; of the First, which had finally arrived to make a nuisance of itself.

Now, after almost a year of constant messages, Cassie was looking at a Dawn-free window on her computer. She wasn't a Slayer, a vampire, or a mystical Key poured into human form; but she had her intuition, its home deep in her gut, and it was telling her something big was going down, probably right at that moment, and she couldn't even offer support long-distance, let alone physical, tangible help.

"Cassie?"

She let out a little yelp, ready to swing a left hook, stopping when she realized it was her brother. "Yeah, Marco?"

Marco Cattalano, like his sister, was blond and blue-eyed, but while hers held a glimmer of innocence (despite her knowledge of human and supernatural evils), he had a jewel hardness to them, like he'd seen too much of the world to _not_ become jaded by it. However, despite the edge, he looked like the world had amused him greatly by some cosmic joke.

"You look like someone ran over your own personal stray."

Cassie winced. "Nice image, Marco. Could've done without."

"Cassie, what is it this time? Distraught isn't a good look for you."

She gestured helplessly at the computer screen. "There's been _nothing_ from Sunnydale for the last week. Dawn's been practically _devout_ in keeping me updated since last May; now there's nothing." _I will not panic, I will not panic,_ she thought, breathing deeply, slowly, to the cadence of the words.

Marco saw the look in her eyes just before she closed them and began breathing. She was scared enough to be bordering on panic, but not for herself; for their friends in California. It had been two years since Buffy Summers had died for the second time. Marco had been attending UC Sunnydale when Willow, his friend and classmate, resurrected Buffy, ripping her from eternal peace in the process. Cassie had visited Sunnydale midway through the semester to meet the whole Scooby Gang and strike up a friendship with Spike, the neutered vampire reluctantly helping in the good fight.

After Willow's descent into dark magic, Dawn had begun communicating with Cassie, and occasionally Marco, to vent or update on events on the Hellmouth. (Or one of them; according to Rupert Giles, there was another portal to Hell in _Cleveland_, of all places. To which Marco had replied, "We always knew that Cleveland was there for something, just never knew what until now.")

Marco now gently squeezed Cassie's shoulders. "Open your eyes," he ordered quietly, waiting until she did so. "You know these Summers folk are survivors. So is the rest of the bunch; they won't go easily and they'll take anyone foolish enough to be near with them. All your worrying will just make you sick, and that's the last thing the clinic needs." He handed her purse to her and almost lifted her bodily from the chair. "Come on," he prodded, "it's late, and it's been hours since you last ate."

Cassie allowed a little rueful smile to curl her mouth. "Careful, Marco. Keep talking that that, people will mistake you for Doogie Howser."

He lightly tapped her on the back of her skull for the crack, secretly glad she'd recovered enough to taunt him. "Love you, too, sis."

Ten days later, Cassie slipped into the tiny, almost-soundproofed room, regarding the small figure on the bed. Nine-year-old Melissa Franklin was tall and slender for one her age, with shiny chocolate-colored hair and hazel eyes.

Melissa had been plagued by intense nightmares the past week in which she'd been chased by monsters with yellow eyes and fangs. Cassie had immediately come to the conclusion that Melissa's monsters were vampires, but she'd also wondered why Melissa would dream about creatures she'd never seen except in movies (which, in her opinion, were completely wrong and Anne Rice didn't know what she was talking about, with the one exception currently paying penance for his sins in Los Angeles).

Cassie now looked at the girl as she slept on, looking peaceful. She almost hated to wake her, but Cassie had promised Melissa's parents that their daughter would get her homework done and spelling words memorized. She knelt by the bed and stroked Melissa's hair, smiling as she let out a sleepy groan. "Mel, sweetie, time to wake up," Cassie called softly.

Melissa slowly blinked her eyes open, a smile on her little mouth. "I dreamed again, Cassie."

"Yeah?" With a combination of adult concern and girlfriend eagerness, Cassie sat on the bed facing the younger girl. "Tell me?"

"Well, it started out like the others, with the monsters chasing me. But then someone fought them, turned them into dust an' everything."

_Yup, vampires._ "Who fought the monsters? Your dad?"

Melissa shook her head, a wicked smile lighting up her face. "Nope. I love my dad, but _this_ guy was a hottie."

"Mel!" Cassie exclaimed in a mock-scandalized tone.

Melissa giggled, clapping a hand over her mouth.

"Well, if it wasn't your dad, who was he?" Cassie pressed, curious now.

Melissa's smile went quickly from wicked to dreamy. "I think he was an angel."

"Really?"

"Mm-hmm. He was kinda glowy, an' he was English."

"What does being English have to do with it?"

Melissa shrugged. "I dunno, but he chased the other monsters away and talked to me."

"What did he say?"

"He said I was a very special little girl, and soon, I'd know just how special I am." She tilted her head to one side, confusion in her eyes. "I wish I knew what he meant."

_Yeah, me too._ "Well, what did this 'hottie' look like? _Details_, hon!"

Melissa rolled her eyes up, thinking back to the dream. "Well, he was tall. Taller than you, but not so tall as Dad. Maybe by a few inches?"

_Okay, just under six feet. _

"And he had these _really_ nice, deep-blue eyes. But his hair was weird, like when Jake dunked his head in a bucket of bleach? His hair was almost white for a month."

_White-blond hair, blue eyes…wait a minute!_ "Was he wearing a long black coat? Leather maybe?"

Melissa frowned in thought, then shook her head, chocolate locks bobbing around her head. "No, but he wasn't wearing white, either, like the pictures I've seen. He was wearing gray, I think."

Cassie smiled, trying to ward off the sudden sadness, knowing it was silly to harbor such a hope. Only two days before had she finally gotten word from Dawn and Buffy, somewhere in Europe. She had allowed herself only a day to mourn his passing, hoping he didn't receive the fate of other vampires.

Melissa's brows furrowed. "Are you okay, Cassie?"

The older woman shook her head to clear it and plastered on a brighter smile. "Sure, sweetie, why?"

"You looked sad before."

Cassie waved the concern away. "It's nothing, just…" She sighed. "When you described your angel, it sounded like someone I knew. He never went anywhere without a long black leather coat."

"Did he die?"

Melissa's soft words struck Cassie to the heart. The shine of tears gave the younger girl all the answer she needed. She laid a small hand on Cassie's cheek. "I'm sorry, Cassie."

Cassie smiled, patting Melissa's hand. "It's okay, Mel. The one thing I have to remember is that he died helping others. Helping the woman he loved." She squeezed the hand and gave it a little tug. "Come on. I promised your folks you'd get your homework done before they got home."

Melissa groaned. "Spelling words are _such_ a pain."

"I know, but you don't want to look like an idiot next year when you're doing book reports."

Cassie stretched as she wrapped her wet body in a thick towel. Her parents had gone out to dinner, Marco to an appointment with one of his female friends (who, he claimed, was practice for his psychiatry rotation), leaving her alone in the family's Brooklyn apartment with a DVD and a pint of chocolate-chocolate chip ice cream.

As she strode into the living room, robe pulled about her body, she suddenly got the feeling she wasn't alone. "Mom? Dad? Marco?"

No answer.

Nervous now, she grabbed the Louisville Slugger, hefting it like a sword. She'd faced down vampires in her own building and on the California Hellmouth. If this turned out to be a run-of-the-mill burglar, she'd be _very_ disappointed.

"All right, I know someone's here!" she called out defiantly. "Come out where I can see you, then get out before I call NYPD on your ass!"

Again, no answer.

"Okay then. I have very alert neighbors; I scream, you'll _still_ have the cops on your ass." She took in a big lungful, ready to let rip the loudest, longest scream she could muster.

A strong, slim body tackled her from behind, a hand covering her mouth, her shriek muffled. Quickly reversing her hold, Cassie slammed the bat on her attacker's hip, legs, anywhere she could reach, struggling the entire time.

"Cassie, pet, easy! It's okay, it's me."

She froze at the cockney-accented baritone as he spoke in her ear. The last time she'd heard that voice was over a year ago. And, according to friends, the owner of that voice was supposed to be dead. _No, it's impossible!_

The arms gently squeezed her body, almost like an embrace. "Now, 'm gonna let y' go, luv. Promise y' won't scream?"

Having little choice in the matter, she nodded.

Slowly, the arms slackened and the hand gently moved from her mouth, almost caressing it. As the "attacker" stepped away, Cassie turned to face him.

The hair was still a shocking white-blond, tousled into curls from their scuffle. The left eyebrow, once trisected by a scar at the corner, only showed a thin line of tissue; the cheekbones were still razor sharp. The deep blue eyes regarded her with amusement and affection at her dumbfounded expression.

His name sounded on a breath of air from her lips. "Spike?"

His lips twitched in a little smile. "'Lo, Cassie. I'm back."

The bat fell from her nerveless fingers. She distantly remembered having a similar reaction to facing and killing her first vampire. When his presence finally penetrated the fog around her brain, she let out a whoop and slammed into him, staggering him back a few steps. He returned her enthusiastic hug, chuckling silently. "Glad t' see you, too, luv."

She drew back, then grabbed the front of his dove-gray T-shirt to shake him. "Where have you been, you jerk! Dawn and Buffy told me you _died_ closing the Hellmouth."

Spike closed his hands around her fists to still her. "Cassie, if you'll hang on a sec—" He stopped when everything in her went completely still, even as she stared at his hands.

It hadn't registered before she knew who he was; Spike was no longer room-temperature, but warm. She freed one hand, disentangling it from his shirt, and pressed her fingers to the inside of his wrist. _No pulse… but he's as warm as a human._

He smiled ever-so-gently as he saw the confusion in her eyes.

"How?" she murmured, almost to herself, meeting his gaze.

"Somethin' started happenin' t' me when I fell in love with Buffy," he began. "They—" he rolled his eyes up at the ceiling to emphasize "—deemed me worthy t' be somethin' _other_ than demon, more 'n human still."

She blinked. "Spike, you show up, not dead, not room-temperature, and no heartbeat. You're gonna hafta walk me through this."

He gently squeezed the fist still in his hand, then released it and stepped back. "You're lookin' at the Light's newest guardian angel."

Cassie let out an excited squeal before covering her mouth and embarrassing herself further. "So, the demon got a shot at being a real good guy." She grinned as he nodded, grateful that she was getting it. "But if you're the demon—_former_ demon—where's the soul part of you?"

Spike had the piece of mind to look abashed. "Well, actually, I don't know."

"You don't _know_? The demon and the soul have—had—been residing in the same body for—what—the better part of a year and you don't know what happened to your roommate? How can you not know?"

"I just don't, okay?" He ran a hand through his hair, mussing it even further. "Look, since Sunnyhell got shut down, they've been keepin' the demon and soul separate. I guess to keep the soul from influencin' my decision. They gave me a choice: go on to where I c'n be happy, maybe get some rest; or come back 'ere an' keep doin' what I was doin' before I bit the big one, for the good fight."

She gave him a wry little smile. "When I was out there in California, Buffy told me you _like_ this world. What was it you said? 'Man United' and 'Leicester bloody Square'?"

He chuckled. "She still knows me well. How's she been? They've made sure that I've been out of loop on current events down here."

"She and the others have been traveling Europe the last few days, since Sunnydale went under, gathering all the Slayers. They're all okay."

"Good."

She reminded herself to tell him about Anya later. "Spike, why are you here, now? I mean, why come to me?"

"'Cause, not only am I a guardian, I'm acting as a teacher as well. There are two Potentials that're now Slayers here in New York. They've asked me to act as Watcher."

"Hey, hang on. I think we both know what happened the last time two Slayers shared a Watcher: one turned evil."

"Well, we're still in luck, considering that one of them is only nine, and you know her. I came to ask you to help me with her."

Cassie's eyes widened as all the pieces finally fell into place in her mind. The nightmares about vampires, the angel in gray, the sudden amount of strength she'd come into possession of; _it can't be!_ "Melissa? Melissa's a Slayer?"

Marco looked up at one of the lions in front of the New York City Public Library and smiled. "You know these things are mythically supposed to roar when a virgin has walked by?"

His friend smiled. "Yes, and they've never roared."

He shrugged. "Just means they don't work. I've been walking by here for years."

She looked at him, her face lit up with a grin. "How sweet."

He chuckled. "Sweet? You do remember who I am, right? Marco? Annoying, Roman Catholic fascist? Thinks that the old Polish guy in the funny white robes over in Vatican City might be right about one or two things? I can't say what I think for fear of being beat up because I walk through the Village half the time."

She punched his shoulder and he flinched, smarting. "Come on, you big wuss, you killed a mugger before my eyes like he was a vampire, nailed him through the heart. I think you can take care of yourself."

"I know." He ignored the pain. For some reason, whenever she did that for the past few weeks, she's left bruises the size of his hand, spread eagled.

Amanda Colt had been his friend through most crises than she knew about, the vampire plague of Red Hook, two semesters in Sunny Hell where he talked with her by email, and had been his best friend since they first met in the fencing club, and she had wiped the floor with him for a while before he had gotten on a mildly even keel with her. After the first month of practicing, all of their duels had been draws; the fighting had been so aggressive that no one, not even the coach, had even suspected that they'd been letting each other win, mainly because they didn't. Both of them had wiped the floor with the fencing master, twice, and they had never been able to beat each other, and they were both competitive enough to try on multiple levels—they both got the 4.0, the Marshall Scholarship, and the Fulbright Scholarship was up for evaluation, as well as a Rhodes, and they were both able to wipe the floor with each other in the realm of hand-to-hand combat, which Marco had taken an extra care to help her with since his return from California. Odds are, they would both be in Europe this time next year for the Fulbright.

Amanda—her family was from Pennsylvania, and possibly related to the Samuel Colt of gunmaking fame—had a lovely, lazy grace about her catlike walk, and her deep brown eyes and red hair had always attracted him to her. Unfortunately, little things like a boyfriend, followed by a murder, then vampires, and a year and a half either in Sunnydale or picking up the pieces with Willow in England had made any follow up almost impossible.

"But still, skill is no replacement against a dozen femi-nazis who think I'm a proto fascist because I carry a rosary."

"It's not my fault you carry that around your neck, which, last time I checked, it against the religion."

"Yeah, well, in California, you could say that I came across a…Santeria cult. They didn't like the idea of crosses, so I carried this for ready access." He shrugged. "Be prepared, that's the Boy Scout's marching song…"

"Don't go into Tom Lehrer."

"What, you mean I can't do 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park'?"

She laughed. "Don't make me hurt you."

"Never dream of it…but what would you use? I mean, what have we trained with?" he asked.

"Swords, arrows, hands, anything medieval you could get your hands on. What is that about you and old weaponry? Expecting to fight a crusade?"

"Yes, against the forces of darkness….the National Organization of Women."

She narrowed her eyes. "What have you got against feminists?"

"Nothing, I am one. I'm against the 'abortion on demand' lobby. Come on, you know the stats better than I do—most women who go through it suffer from depression and post traumatic stress syndrome. I could never recommend it to anyone in good faith as a doctor…not unless I felt like I needed her medical bills for the rest of her life. Hell, any doctor who suggests it should be fired for malpractice."

She sighed. "En garde!"

Marco back pivoted as she shot forward with a right cross. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward him, shooting out his foot to trip her. She actually leapt over the sweeping kick and landed on her feet, and then flipped him over her hip. He landed flat on his back and rolled off his shoulders, going heels over head onto his feet.

"Where did you get the leg hopping trick?"

"It just came naturally, I guess."

"Not bad. I like it. Again?"

She came at him. He blocked her punch, and she grabbed him and flipped him over her shoulder. He landed on his feet and spun, chopping down on her from above. She spun and blocked it, as well as his chop at her hip. He stepped forward with a left jab for her face. She grabbed him and pulled him forward.

Neither one of them was quite sure what happened next, most of all not who had kissed whom first. No one knew whose idea it was, but they were both certain that it was mutual.

After five minutes, they broke apart. They looked at each other, and after a moment, Marco smiled. "Well, that was fun."

Amanda's eyes glittered. "Yes, it was. I've been waiting to do that for the past six months."

"You could've done it sooner."

"Oh? How much sooner?"

"After I got off the plane from California would have been nice."

She frowned playfully and took a swing at him. It was lucky for him that he anticipated the swing, because when her fist touched the stone pedestal of the library lions, the stone cracked.

Amanda slowly pulled her hand back, and wondered why it wasn't broken in three places.

Marco looked at her, arched his eyebrows and said, "Amanda, darling, I think I need to make an international phone call."

"Why?"

"Well, you ever read literature about vampire slayers?"

She nodded. "When you were rooting through the occult shops in the Village."

"I think you're one of them. It's a long story, but if you can trust me long enough to get you home, I think it'll make sense."

She raised a brow, smiled, and walked over to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. "My place or yours?"

He cocked his head. "I just told you that I think you're a Vampire Slayer, and you don't think I'm nuts. What am I missing?"

"Marco, I've always thought you were nuts, but that hasn't stopped me yet, has it?"

"Um…"

She kissed him again.

Five minutes later, she said, "What happened while you were in Sunnydale?'

"I was nearly eaten by two different super vampires, an indestructible demon who might have been piloting a plane on 9-11, and I was involved in a fight to the death that required blowing up my dorm room. I'll tell you on the way home. I've gotten allergic to nights."

"I can imagine."

"By the way, why did you ask about Sunnyhell?"

She grinned and patted his forearm. "Is that a stake up your sleeve or do you just have an odd anatomy?"

Marco and Amanda strode into his family's apartment to see Cassie in the living room, in T-shirt and cutoff jeans. She jumped to her feet when she saw who it was. "Marco—"

"Cassie, you remember Amanda?"

Cassie nodded, glancing at the redhead. "Hi, Amanda." She turned back to her brother. "Listen—"

"Amanda's a Slayer," Marco interrupted again. "You still have those occult books from a few years ago?"

"Y' won't need 'em," a familiar voice interrupted. "And 's nice t' know you're still as pushy as ever, Marco."

Marco narrowed his eyes at the figure leaning negligently in the kitchen doorway. "Tall, pale and peroxide, what the Hellmouth are _you_ doing here? More importantly, _how_, and how long do we have to keep you?"

Cassie screwed her eyes shut in chagrin. "That's one thing I was trying to tell you." She opened her eyes and regarded them. "The other is: Amanda's not the _only_ Slayer in our corner of the world."

An hour later, the three humans and one angel sat in the living room, sipping coffee and hot chocolate, Marco's face sporting that strange little smile that always reminded Cassie of the one memorable line from _Scaramouche_: "He was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad."

"Damn. You know, having St. Michael recruit _you_ of all beings is a real blow to every philosophy class I've ever taken."

"But doesn't it reassure y' that, if the Almighty c'n forgive a lowly demon, there's hope for you?" Spike snarked, his trademark smirk playing across his face.

"Given what the Powers that Be tried to pull out in California lately, I don't think it's the Almighty so much as its someone who likes playing God."

"Hey! Please, no philosophical or theological debates," Cassie sniped at both males, while Amanda bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud. "Not tonight. We just found out there are two Slayers and a Watcher-slash-guardian angel in the same neighborhood on the same freaking day!" She took a calming sip of her coffee, gone lukewarm long ago. "Amanda, I know we've given you the Slayer spiel, and you seem okay with it—"

"I'll be even better if I get him in close quarters," Amanda said playfully, staring at Spike. The former vampire gave her a genuinely flattered little smile, but he was largely unaffected.

"Don't smile so broadly, Spike," Marco informed him. "We used to go round and round before she became stronger than a locomotive, and we broke even. Considering that I did the same with Buffy, it means Amanda could probably swipe the floor with her _and_ you…maybe at the same time."

Cassie chose to ignore the combative little interaction. "What I'm worried about is what I'll say to Melissa. It's bad enough she's having vamp-mares and sudden surges of strength; telling her she's one of the Chosen will only add to her fears. Plus the fact that she's only seen a vampire in her dreams—" her gaze slid to the only unnatural blonde in the room "—on top of which, the 'angel' who saves her in one of said dreams suddenly invades her reality to teach her about her new Chosen status. I'm sorry, but that's too much to put on the shoulders of a nine-year-old, especially all at once."

"Cassie, despite what you've just said, Melissa's a tough kid," Marco countered. "I saw her face down a bully on the playground this past week. He also had a baseball bat."

"She didn't try t' fight, did she?" Spike asked. "She may have the strength now, but she still needs the trainin'."

"Not exactly. She threw the bat away and that was that; while she told me later she felt a sudden surge of confidence, I found the bat in several pieces. I thought the wood was simply crappy."

"That had to've been Red's spell kickin' in," Spike mused aloud. He regarded Cassie thoughtfully. "How would Melissa react t' meetin' a newbee at the clinic?"

Unable to help herself, Cassie felt a grin split her lips. "Funny, you never struck me as the 'Roma Downey' type."

"True," Marco said. "She's lovely, pretty and Irish, you're the opposite on all three counts, and being British is a bad enough start for you."

Amanda nodded. "Not to mention the bad dye job. Where did you get it from, Pamela Anderson's medicine cabinet?"

Spike narrowed his eyes. "You really _are_ his girl, aren't you? I can see the resemblance."

Marco's eyes went cold. "If that's so, think about getting on _both_ our bad sides."

"Exactly," Amanda agreed. "He's killed a major vampire, one high profile demon and at least one mugger that he's told me about."

Cassie's eyes widened. "What mugger?"

Marco cursed himself for not telling Amanda not to mention that little detail around his sister. "Some guy jumped us during the vampire havoc when your Mick arrived in town. I thought he might be a vampire, so when he pulled a gun, I drew faster with the stake."

Cassie had to bite down on her temper to keep from screaming at him. She'd known he'd always kept secrets, but this… "Why didn't you tell me?" she asked.

"I didn't think that you wanted to hear that I drove a stake into his heart and enjoyed every moment of it."

It was then that Cassie saw what Marco was protecting her from, the hidden predator in his nature. She saw what she had chosen not to see in the first place, because she hadn't wanted to think it possible or probable of her brother, the young man who had wanted to be a doctor for as long as either of them could remember.

Spike saw the sudden shift in dynamic between the two siblings, and tried to defuse the heightened tension. "Oi, now, no time t' be braggin', Marco." He turned to Cassie, gently squeezing her hand and leaning close to whisper in her ear. "Cassie, pet, break down once Amanda's well away. I'll answer any questions I can, okay?"

Cassie mutely nodded, putting her hand on top of his.

"Don't blame me," Marco added, trying to break the mood with a fight. "Amanda blew my cover."

Cassie looked at Amanda. "And you don't have a problem with this?"

The redheaded Slayer cocked her head. "He had a gun and was about to use it. Do you think honestly think that he should be whining and crying over it? Now, next topic, are we done for the night?"

Spike looked at her, and was about to reply, when he stopped and stared, really looking at her. "Wait a bit, might you be Irish in any way?"

"I would be. Why do you ask?"

"It's just…you remind me of someone Cassie and I know." He hesitated and shrugged. "Must be the hair."

"Well, if you're interested, my family's from the Connamara region of Ireland, not Ulster. Otherwise, my family would have raised me to kill you the moment you opened your mouth for being a Limey. Feel better?"

Spike opened his mouth, and Marco glared at him. The younger Cattalano had figured it out a moment after Spike did, and he didn't want Spike to say anything. Cassie noted what Marco had hidden, as he let his internal self be reflected in his eyes—which, at the moment, made his eyes as cold as artic seas and as menacing as a mushroom cloud. This is what he had hid from her—not the murder, but part of his very self, the part that could kill mercilessly anyone who had hurt his people.

Amanda watched the exchange and smacked Marco's arm. "Cut it out. Now what the hell is going on?"

Marco sighed and looked at her, his eyes merely tired now. "You resemble a thousand-year-old Irish Slayer-turned-vampire that I had to kill. In fact, except for the eyes, you look just like her."

Cassie sniffed, the terror almost completely pushed aside. "You're kidding, right? Nuala was the ugliest vampire I've ever seen."

Spike nodded. "Ditto. And _we_ killed her, not you alone."

"No, you weren't in the hospital room. Buffy was, and helped Doyle with the cleanup. You also didn't see her human face, which was as beautiful as her vampire face was ugly. One knife severed her spine, another in her heart, and a garrote dipped in holy water finished the job with her head…" He looked at Amanda. "She was a Slayer about a thousand years ago, which means she might have been old enough to have given birth. Oddly enough, there might be a possibility that you're a relative." He shrugged. "It's a theory." He looked at his watch. "It's also damned late, so how about we at least get everyone to bed?"

Everyone heard the apartment door creak open, their heads popping up. Dr. Roberto and Deirdre Cattalano walked in, stopping short at the people in their living room.

"Hi, Mom, Dad," Cassie greeted brightly. "Have a good time?"

"Perfectly nice, thank you," Roberto replied, still staring at their guests.

"Dad, Mom, you remember Amanda," Marco started.

Amanda smiled, lifting a hand in greeting. "Hi."

Cassie began to introduce Spike. "And he's—"

"Jus' leavin', actually," the vamp-turned-angel interrupted. "We'll talk t'morrow, pet," he whispered in her ear, then raised his voice. "'Night, all. Doc, Missus, nice t' meet you." And he was gone.

Deirdre shook her head. "Strange young man."

Marco shrugged. "Don't look at me, he's Cassie's friend."

Cassie glared at her brother with annoyance.

"Okay, then. Good night."

The three of the younger generation bid them good night. After a moment of thick silence, Amanda quietly asked, "They don't know, do they?"

"No," Cassie admitted.

"And I think we'd all be better off if they didn't," Marco added.

"Before a few years ago, the only monsters we'd ever encountered were in the movies and TV," Cassie explained. "We're not sure how they'd react if they found out vampires and other nasties existed." She shook her head and changed the subject. "Amanda, if you want, I can set up the spare cot in my room, and if you don't mind light rock."

Amanda smiled. "Thanks, Cassie, but I don't think so. I'd like to sleep in my bed tonight."

"I'll see if I can contact Giles, maybe Willow," Marco put in. "Maybe they'll have some pointers on training a pair of newbie Slayers."

"Giles and Willow?"

Cassie smiled. "I'll let him tell you." And she went off to her own bedroom.

Cassie noted later, much later (just as she was going to sleep and saw his eyes again in her mind), that she was very grateful no one she knew and cared about would oppose him.


	3. Sergeants in the Army of Light

**Chapter 2: Sergeants in the Army of Light.**

Marco Cattalano opened his eyes and smiled. There she was, the girl of his dreams.

Unfortunately, immediately next to her was the girl of _her_ dreams.

"Hi Willow, Kennedy, when did you get in?"

"Just now," the Slayer answered. "You know you're naked, right?"

"Yes, it's May, it's warm, it's New York. I also know that I'm not under any covers. I stopped carrying the hundred stakes to bed a few weeks ago, I kept rolling over on them, and there's no need at the moment, unless there's some vampires I know of out to get me and have been invited in—speaking of which, did you know that Spike is alive?"

"I hear he's in LA."

Marco smiled, but said nothing. _I know something you don't know. _"You're both here about the Slayers?"

"Yeah…" Willow's cheeks turned the color of her hair. "You know you should get dressed, right? It's two in the afternoon."

He grinned. "Yeah, nice thing about the doctoral program, when you get all your work done, you don't have to rush in. That's good when you're out at one in the morning." He stretched, then stopped to laugh. "Sorry about that, I figured that you both just saw me while I was asleep, so it's a little late for modesty. Besides, neither of you two care."

Kennedy shrugged. "Point taken. Where's the… did you say Slayers, plural?"

Marco nodded. "I suppose you didn't hear; there are apparently two of them. Did you just magically pop in here by any chance?"

Willow nodded.

"Good aim. You've never even been here before."

The redhead smiled. "Well, I focused in on you, felt around for flat surfaces, and landed here."

"So, do you have the one you were talking about?" Kennedy asked, businesslike.

He laughed. "You think I keep women in my bed? Sorry, I try not to sleep with women at all unless I'm married to them…" he paused and looked at Willow. "Or unless they're in need of something."

Kennedy looked from one to the other. Marco grinned and said, "Don't be jealous, it's nothing serious. Or at least, I don't think she took it seriously."

"And you did?"

He shrugged. "I take everything seriously, even my joking."

There was a knock on the door. "Marco, Amanda. You busy?"

He furrowed his brow and looked at the clock. "Gee she's early." He quickly tossed on a robe, fastened it. "Come in."

Amanda entered, thankfully no one behind her. She spotted the two women and smiled. "You must be Willow and Kennedy, he nailed you both perfectly."

Kennedy grinned. "Didn't nail me at all, I'm not that kind of girl."

Amanda laughed. "So I've been told." She locked her eyes on Willow. "Marco has good taste."

Willow blushed furiously. "He told?"

She nodded. "Yes, and frankly, I can see why he did what he did; even I'd consider sleeping with you."

Willow cocked her head. "I thought Marco said you were with him. You're a—"

"No, that's my point." She looked at Marco's robe. "You entertaining?"

"Not on my best day."

Amanda jerked her chin out to the door. "Cassie already took off. Melissa's supposed to see her after school, about three."

Marco grinned. "Nice to see that my sister trusts me with you in the house, supposedly alone together. Frankly, I'm alone with the woman I love, two lesbians, and I'm only wearing a bathrobe; some men have dreams like this."

Kennedy, mildly amused, knowing full well that she could take him at any moment, said, "And you don't?"

"Darlin', I don't do anything until I have my morning cup of coffee. And frankly, damn it, unless you all want me to flash you ladies, I suggest you move the bachelorette party the _hell out of my bedroom!_"

Once the door slammed shut, Amanda smiled, looked to Willow and said, "So, Willow, I here you almost destroyed the world once?"

"Yeah. I was kinda cranky, but I'm all better now, honest."

Kennedy smiled and ruffled Willow's hair playfully. "That's my girl." She looked to Amanda and checked her out for a split second—she had a nicely distracting chest size and red hair that could even distract from that, and glittering brown eyes—and she decided that if this was the sort of woman that Marco would be interested in, she—Kennedy—should have been flattered that Marco had found her attractive a few months ago. Heck, Kennedy even thought Amanda was better looking than she was, in fact, more attractive than most people…except for Willow, of course.

"So, Amanda," Kennedy said, "what has Marco told you?"

"As much as he could in a train ride from the Library to Brooklyn. There was something about a vampire he killed in New York, a self-healing demon in Sunnydale, and apparently, an Irish vampire he killed who might be a relative of mine, and that he…helped you when you were first in magic withdrawal."

Kennedy furrowed her brows. "Yeah, that's the part I'm interested in."

Amanda waved it away. "Don't worry, before you, and from what Marco told me, her mind was on someone else. What about the other stuff?"

"Well," Willow began, grateful to get off the other subject, "The First tried to kill him, and—"

"The What? Start with the invincible demon, and work your way up, okay?"

Cassie was finishing the last of the afternoon paperwork when Melissa came barreling through the clinic's double doors, bookbag swinging and hazel eyes shining. "Hi, Cassie!"

"Hey, Mel. You look like you had a good day."

Melissa nodded, brown hair bouncing around her head. "One of my teachers let me take a final test today," she said excitedly. She held up her thumb and forefinger an inch apart. "I am this much closer to having the summer free and clear!" She broke into a little happy dance.

Cassie felt her heart squeeze with guilt. Okay, new Slayer powers, big confidence boost, sure; but this little girl, not even double-digits in age yet, was expected to go out at night and fight vampires and demons?

_Life—and Slayage—is _so _unfair. _

"That's great news," Cassie said at last, when Melissa had stopped jumping around. She purposely adopted a serious face. "Melissa, I need to talk to you—about your dreams."

Melissa's smile dropped away as she was reminded of her nightmares—which she would, unfortunately, understand all too soon. "What about them?" she asked warily.

Cassie glanced around furtively. "Maybe we'd better take this somewhere else. Hot chocolate?"

Melissa's eyes lit up again. Mrs. Franklin was a purist; no candy or refined sugars in _her_ home, thank you very much. Melissa would virtually sneak away for a Hershey bar.

And Cassie _always_ made the best hot chocolate.

"There's someone I'd like you to meet," Cassie added, "but he won't be here until later." She led the way to the kitchen, letting Melissa pull out two large mugs while she prepped the milk and got the squares of real chocolate melting. Once the chocolate was nicely molten, Cassie carefully poured the hot milk over it and whisked the two together.

She poured out her concoction, smiling as Melissa topped off both mugs with the whipped cream she'd found squirreled away in the refrigerator. They sat at the small table and sipped carefully. Usually, Melissa hissed in pain as the drink scalded her tongue and throat, feeling it burn on its way down to her stomach. At which point, Cassie put a small glass of water within reach for the young one to drink—but not this time. Melissa sipped it down without a problem.

"I never learn, do I?" Melissa asked sheepishly.

"There are times I wonder," Cassie teased gently.

Combing nervous fingers through her hair, Melissa broached the subject first. "What about my dreams?"

Breathing in, Cassie started talking: the Slayer, vampires, the spell that had caused Potentials to awaken to their Slayer status worldwide. "When a Slayer first comes into her own, it sometimes starts with dreams—nightmares, really—of vampires and other evils she'll have to face, of the lives of past Slayers. Other times, the dreams are coupled with surges of the strength she'll need to fight."

She paused in her monologue, seeing that Melissa's eyes had grown steadily wider, almost comically so. "So, you're saying I'm a superhero?"

Cassie smiled gently. "Essentially."

"And the monsters I dreamed about…those were vampires?"

Cassie nodded.

Melissa tilted her head to one side. "Then what about the angel I saw, the one that saved me?" She sounded triumphant, as if this would debunk everything that Cassie had just told her.

Cassie's eyes flickered past Melissa as the kitchen's door swung open. "Here's your chance to meet him. Turn around."

She did, and looked up into Spike's deep blue eyes, sparkling as he smiled at her. "'Lo, Melissa. 'S a pleasure t' meet you."

Melissa suddenly felt dizzy, numb and frightened all at once. Emitting a short shriek, she sprang up, belting him in the stomach and getting ready to flee, ignoring Cassie's cry to wait. Spike, even doubled over in surprise if not pain, reacted by wrapping his arms around her before she could escape. He held the young Slayer close, gently whispering calming words to her even as she fought to get free. After five straight minutes, Melissa finally collapsed into tears, hearing the words from her dream echo again and again in her mind. "Take it back, take it back," she whimpered into his chest.

Cassie quickly put the cups in the microwave for later and motioned to Spike to follow her to the sleep room. Spike nodded, continuing to comfort Melissa as he carried her out of the kitchen.

He felt like he'd been worked over with a baseball bat.

"So is there any idea why the First wanted Marco dead?"

"I don't know; we just assumed it wanted all of us dead. Besides, he was real nifty with the chemical stuff, he probably would've thought of a way around the whole 'into the Hellmouth' thing."

"Not really," Marco said from immediately behind them, making all but Amanda jump. "I would've gone in with a fire hose attached to a recently-blessed reservoir, not to mention enough firebombs to level the place, and maybe a nuclear bomb, but aside from that, can't think of a thing. I know I'm annoying, but not _that_ much. I mean, I've taken out three demons that I shouldn't have been able to kill, and unless they were close personal friends of the infinite evil, can't see a reason why It would care, and frankly, can't say that I care why It wants me either. It's over, thankfully. So, anyone know what my sister's up to?"

"She's bringing in the Slayerette," Amanda answered.

He sighed. "Great, children. Shoot me now. Please."

Amanda fluttered her eyes at him in a deliberately corny manner. "You mean you don't want to have children?"

His eyes lit up. "With you darling, as many as possible as often as possible, but let me at least _buy_ the wedding ring first."

Kennedy looked from one to the other, then raised an eyebrow at Willow. The redhead smiled, touched the Slayer's knee and said, "Don't mind them, honey, they're Catholic. Different rules."

"And proud of it," Marco added, sitting next to Amanda, automatically sliding an arm around her waist. "Trust me, if I weren't a good little former altar boy with delusions of adequacy, and if Amanda were crazy enough to sleep with me before marriage, well, I wouldn't have the energy to do, well, um….anyone—thing! Any_thing _else."

Kennedy laughed. "Ah, straight people, no fun at all."

Amanda's eyes glittered. She slowly straightened and gracefully slinked her way over to Kennedy, wrapped her hand around the back of the Slayer's head, and firmly planted a long lingering kiss on the right edge of her mouth, out of Willow's direct vision, so it looked to Willow like she was making out with Kennedy. She straightened, backed away and sat down.

"Who says?"

Willow stared, slack jawed for a moment, and then took Kennedy's hand. "Honey, I think we need to go, now…for a moment."

Marco looked at his watch. "You can use my room. I need to change the sheets soon anyway. Might as well be now. 'Manda, let's take a walk in the hall."

She looped his arm through his. "Good, now you can tell me all of the details that you left out of your time in Sunnydale. An invincible demon you took out more or less on your own?"

He shot a glare at the lesbians for spilling the details, but they had already closed the door to his room.

Cassie looked on helplessly as Melissa continued to shake with sobs, Spike holding on tight and murmuring to her. She couldn't quite make out what he was saying, but she could see they were having a calming effect on the young Slayer. Slowly, her tears stopped and her sobs were replaced with sniffles.

Cassie tentatively stroked Melissa's hair. "You okay, sweetie?"

Melissa shuddered, shaking her head. "I don't know," she replied in a small voice. "I'm a superhero." She sounded as if she was trying to wrap her brain around the concept as easily as her tongue around the words.

"The more popular parlance is 'Chosen', pet," Spike offered.

Melissa pulled completely from his arms, giving him a glare. "I didn't _ask_ you."

"Down, girl," Cassie shot in return. "Believe it or not, Spike's here to help, especially concerning your new status."

Spike gave Cassie an amused look. "Y' get the feelin' the temperament comes with the Slayer package?"

Cassie grinned and shook her head. "Sorry, she had that _before_ Willow worked her witchy ways."

"That's a tongue-twister," Melissa smiled a bit. "Willow?"

"Willow's a very powerful witch, Mel," Cassie explained. "She worked the magic a few weeks ago that made you a junior Slayer." She met Spike's eyes. "Marco must have contacted her or Giles by now. You have homework, Mel?"

Melissa shrugged. "Not much, just a few pages for history. I finished the rest earlier today."

"Looks like Red'll have someone to talk intellect with," Spike remarked with a smile. "Amanda strikes me as the 'action' type."

"Amanda's another Slayer," Cassie said at Melissa's puzzled look. "Spike's gonna teach both of you."

Spike stood and offered a hand to the young Slayer. "Ready t' meet her, kitten? Ready t' learn 'bout how special you are?"

Melissa looked at Spike, then Cassie, then his hand. Before two weeks ago, none of her friends would have called her particularly brave or courageous. Now, she couldn't imagine _not_ taking a challenge, especially one that seemed this huge, head-on.

She reached out and wrapped her fingers around his, letting him hold her hand. "Okay, I'm ready."

Cassie looked at her young friend with unmistakable pride.

An hour later, he just finished describing the death of the late Slayer Vampire, and was about to head back inside when he heard a voice say. "You're a superhero too?"

Amanda and Marco looked down on Melissa. Amanda beamed. "Yes."

"A Slay-her?"

"Yes, a Slayer."

"Aren't you a little old for that?"

Catalano smiled tightly, looking at Amanda. "Cute, isn't she?"

"Aye, she is," Spike agreed.

Marco's eyes went dead and looked at him. "Oh, the IRS agent returns. What happened, run out of Enron people to eat?" He glanced at his watch. "Excuse me, I have to go check on something." He looked over Spike's left shoulder at his sister. "Hi, Cassie. Hold everyone out here."

He opened the door to see both women on the couch, arms casually around each other, both with big smiles on their faces.

"It's safe. You folks have fun while I rearm."

"Rearm?"

Marco nodded. "Now that fang face is here, we're going to have such a fun time. I just want to live through it. Excuse me."

Cattalano locked himself in his room, opening a window to clear out certain smells, and quickly went to work. He started by taking his gym bag out of the closet, removing wooden throwing knives, sheaths, and his dress sword from Xavier. He double-checked the tape on his stakes, to make sure the firecrackers were still attached to set off the turpentine. He carefully strapped the sheaths to his forearms, calves, ankles, and took off his shirt to assemble the full body sheath, which had slots for neck and shoulder knives. He looped the neck piece over his head, and slipped the shirt on over it so he could attend to the shoulder sheaths. He removed a large Snapple bottle of holy water, checked the load on the squirt guns, and slipped them into the small of his back. He then removed a box, carefully padded on the inside, and checked his load of nitroglycerin in vials.

"So you do this every day?" Buffy's voiced asked.

Marco sighed, closed his eyes, and reached for the crossbow in his gym bag, promptly loading it. "Has anyone ever told you that you're annoying?"

The First leapt onto his bed as though sitting on the edge. "No, I never cared enough."

"But you care about me?" he inquired, loading another set on the bow.

The First beamed in its Buffy Summers guise. "The thing is, I'm not sure what you are. Trust me, I know everything, seen everything, but not you."

He chuckled, loading the final bow. "You've got to get out more. They call me a man."

She leaned forward. "Don't you want to know why I tried so hard to kill you in January?"

"Because I was Buffy's friend? Morale killer?"

Her eyes lit up. "Oh, I intend to do more than kill your morale. I intend to use you. You see, you're what I like to call a saint in training—you don't believe in your own limits, so they don't apply. You make your own pathetic reality, only it's a scary reality because you enforce it on the rest of us. You say that you are whatever you need to be, and you are. That's your problem. I still need you dead."

Marco shook his head. "You _want_ me dead, that's the difference. You _need_ nothing, you're a creature who doesn't want to acknowledge that something else created you."

"Buffy's" eyes twitched with rage. "You won't like my response to that."

"Like what? You saw the last time what happens when you come to me, pal. You're just going to have your ass handed to you all over again."

Before it could say another word, he rammed the door with his shoulder and leveled his crossbow at the door to the apartment seconds before it broke open. The Bringer with an axe landed within axe-swing of Amanda's head, and no one could have moved fast enough to have avoided it, not even a Slayer.

Three arrows were pumped into the Bringer's chest before he even hit the floor.

Everyone was on their feet in a second, Marco quickly scooped up his gym bag and stuck his hand in it to check one more item.

Five more Bringers were at the door, each with two knives and an axe. Marco grabbed Spike and dragged him in front of him. Spike took the knife in the chest, Marco pulled it out and hurled it back into the hallway. Before any of the other Bringers could hurl knives, there were five distinctive little spurts of noise before they all collapsed in the hallway. Melissa, Amanda, Kennedy, Willow, Cassie and Spike looked at the dead Bringers oddly.

Marco casually stepped over to the hall, and at his side dangled a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic with a sound suppressor attached. He checked each and every one of them for signs of life. He found one still breathing, barely.

Marco smiled, looked at him where his eyes should've been, and said, "Don't _fuck_ with the army of light," before shooting him in the forehead.

The room settled into a stunned silence until Melissa tugged on the sleeve of Cassie's shirt. Cassie looked at her blankly and bent down.

Melissa cupped her hand to Cassie's ear and whispered, "He said a bad word."


	4. Lock & Load

**Chapter 3: Lock and load.**

"Where did you get that!" Cassie demanded, looking at the hand cannon.

Marco looked up. "Oh, this? I had Xander raid a gun store and FedEx whatever was left behind by the Sunnydale population as they left town. I was hoping to keep it a surprise, but that wasn't an option. The First was chatting with me, and I decided that It wasn't going to wait for me this time, and strike before anyone could react. So I reacted before it could make a move."

"Wait, the First?" Willow asked in shock. "I thought we smooshed it."

"'Parently, not well enough, Red," Spike remarked.

Willow and Kennedy blinked a couple times, finally registering his presence. Willow carefully pressed her hand to Spike's chest, checking to see it didn't go through him. Her eyes lit up at the warm peace flowing through his eyes; she knew what he had become. "Welcome back, Spike."

Spike kissed her cheek. "Good t' be back, Will." He looked at Kennedy and held out his hand. She reluctantly shook it.

"Hey, Willow," Cassie greeted. Willow responded by drawing Cassie into a hug. Cassie drew back first (partially because she didn't want to know what a jealous Kennedy was like) and pulled Melissa forward. "Melissa, this is Willow, the one I told you about. Willow, Melissa."

Melissa looked up at the older redhead with wide hazel eyes. "You're really a witch? Like the Charmed Ones?" she asked in awe.

Willow and Cassie shared an amused glance over her head. "Yes, I'm a witch, but I don't have any sisters, so no 'Power of Three'," Willow admitted. "And I can be _a lot _crankier than the Halliwells could _ever_ be."

"And a lot prettier too," Marco added. "And I mean than all three of them together…which, on second thought, sounds a little too kinky."

Spike groaned with the thought.

"Still think it's cool," Melissa noted. She glanced at Spike. "What's his problem?"

Marco grinned. "He hasn't _laid_ down for a while."

"Now that that's done with, can we get on to more important issues?" Marco griped, tucking away his weaponry. "Besides, doesn't anyone remember the news update? The First is unkillable, and indestructible. It can create more of its own Bringers, and we obviously haven't killed them all, and frankly, you only stopped it from becoming corporeal—remember, when the number of its super-vamps numbered the amount of people on the planet, It would become solid, not before. You killed the super-vamps, and a lot of Bringers, not the First."

"Very good, Marco, you paid attention," the thing that sounded like Buffy said.

"Oh, and that's the First," Marco muttered. "Pay no attention to the shade behind the curtain, it's annoying but harmless."

The First smiled. "Well, if you don't show up on the rooftop at eleven tonight, I'm going to have your parents killed, and frankly, I don't think you want that."

If Cassie's glare had the ability to be lethal, the First would have suffered the Almighty's wrath ten times over. _St. Michael, I know you don't normally allow it, but let me face this…thing down, just once, _she silently prayed to God's Marine. No one, but _no one_ threatened her family, not even the greatest evil since Lucifer was cast out of Heaven.

Marco smiled. "One of these days, you're going to learn to keep your mouth shut. But no, your only superpower is the ability to piss people off, you know that, don't you?"

It shrugged. "It works."

"Not really, no. It just helps us kick the crap out of you, because in addition to fighting for our lives, it means we _want_ to beat you around the place."

Marco stepped closer, looming over it. "I'm half sorry Buffy didn't just _let_ you become corporeal, because that would make it so easy for me to lean over and rip your arms off and beat you to death with them."

It leaned forward to him and whispered. "Trust me, I'd enjoy it, especially when you realize that I can't be killed. Ever. Just be on the roof. And bring your friends, I'd like to kill them all too."

He beamed. "I don't bring people who are just going to sit around and watch me beat up on some poor helpless bastard you send after me."

It shook its head. "We'll see."

It vanished, and Marco merely sighed. He turned to Amanda and said, "Come on, I'm going to need your help on a few things." He looked to the others. "Please, talk among yourselves."

Amanda closed the door to Marco's room and whirled to face him. "What, exactly, are we doing? You just—"

He raised his hand. "I know. Trust me on this, I have a plan in mind, I just need to be able to do something."

"What?"

"I've fought Buffy, and I won; I fought Bringers, and I win; I need to see if I can fight someone who thinks like me, and who's as strong as Buffy."

Amanda launched herself at him with a right cross, and Marco leapt back. Amanda, anticipating a blow to her ribs, swept her right forearm down in a block, blocking a fist that would never come—Marco had instead waited for that block to launch his attack, a two-fisted thrust. Amanda caught one hand before it connected, but the second one hit her kidney, and he threw himself into her, knocking her off balance for a second before he threw both arms up in the air, breaking her hold on him, and striking her at the same time on the chin. She blinked as the blow jarred her, but found that it didn't hurt as much as she expected it to.

Marco leapt back, making sure to keep himself out of a kick—he wasn't sure if she knew that she could now take his head off with one contact. He leapt onto his bed and jumped off of it onto the ceiling fan, launching a kick for her head, and she promptly dropped to the floor, dodging the follow-up kick as well, but he did drop from the ceiling fan directly on top of her, tapping the blunt end of his stake against where her heart should be.

He smiled. "It's a start."

Marco merely waited on top of his apartment building, eyes closed, listening for the approaching threat. With his luck, it would not come in a direct approach anyway—he'd probably hear it first.

"Hey, you're dinner, aren't you?"

He opened his eyes, confused. "There was something about a major threat sent after me, you can't be it."

The short, skinny vampire grinned. "Why not?"

"Well, you see, I came all prepared." He reached to the small of his back and pulled out a large gun. "This is a .50 caliber Desert Eagle, powerful enough to take down a bear. And I get _you_?"

The vampire stepped forward. "Bullets don't work on me, pal."

"Really? Then this is worthless, isn't it?" He answered, holding the gun in between them, muzzle pointed up. "It's not like I can do something as simple as—" He dropped the muzzle down, at the vampire, and fired, blowing his head literally off his shoulders, turning it him instant ash. "—blow your head off." He sighed. "Well, that was a waste of my time."

"I don't think so, young man," said a deep voice laced with a Russian accent.

Marco looked to the rooftop on his right, spotting the big vampire he had seen months before in Sunnyhell, who had been identified as Mikhail the Bear's brother. "Nice move. What was with the other vamp?"

He waved it away. "A pawn. I wanted to see what you can do. You didn't give me much of a show."

"Sorry about that, I'm not very obliging. Hey, you at least deprived me of the surprise."

"Not really. I saw the bulge in your clothing. I can probably identify everything you have on."

Cattalano smiled. "Okay. So that means I shouldn't bother shooting you, considering you can probably dodge all of them."

He shook his head. "I don't need to—I just need to avoid a head shot."

"Point taken."

"I hear you're a chess player."

"Last time I checked. You?"

"I beat one of the IBM supercomputers in a straight match—I didn't even need to have my pieces move all over the place to confuse it. I think 20 moves ahead, most days."

Marco frowned. "Darn, that's how many I think ahead. My girlfriend thinks 21 moves, but I'm possibly more vicious, which is why I occasionally win."

Cattalano put his gun behind his back, as if to holster it, but instead thrust his arm around his back, poking the barrel out the other side of his body, and fired.

However, the Russian vampire was already in motion, leaping out of the way, having already anticipated the move. Marco whipped the gun to the fore, aiming for the vampire's chest, and fired. The Russian kept moving, until he was directly in front of the human. He could see the gun was aimed at his chest—if fact, it was aimed at the wrong side of his chest. He fired off three shots in quick succession, and the vampire didn't even blink, knowing that nothing could happen.

What he didn't expect was the squirt gun to appear in Marco's hand, firing into the open wounds only just produced in the vampire's chest, causing the water to literally get into his body. The vampire flinched in surprise, causing Marco to tweak the weapon upward and fire for his skull. He still moved out of the way of the bullet, but the ear had vaporized, and part of the neck bone was crushed. In fact, the vampire could feel parts of his body go numb from the nerve damage caused by Marco redirecting his squirt gun directly into the new wound, making sure that the damage was as permanent as possible.

The vampire growled and leapt for the edge of the roof. Marco raised the gun and fired his last shot after the vampire.

"Damn it."

He slowly moved to put the gun away when the vampire came back—he had actually grabbed onto the ledge and threw himself up, feet first, slamming into Marco's body. Cattalano collapsed, the squirt gun and the Desert Eagle sliding out of his hands. Marco rolled to his feet, two stakes in hand.

He smiled. "That was a nice one."

The Vampire nodded. "Thank you. But shouldn't you have been shattered by that attack?"

"Yes, but I said I wouldn't bring my friends, not ask them for some magical assistance. I figured a temporary shield would help, just to see what I was dealing with. Your boss seemed too sure of itself, so some help was not out of line. Don't worry, the shield faded once you hit it. We can now play for keeps."

The vampire grinned with ugly teeth. "Good."

Marco then did something he never thought he would do in his entire life of dealing with vampires.

Attacked.

The Russian was a little surprised, but knew what Marco would try to do—lunge for his legs, cut them out from under him, stab him with an ignitable stake, and then roll away before he could kill him.

With a thought process as fast as a computer, the vampire thought about all of the alternatives.

_Kick for the human's face as he lunges._

_Grab him in midair and swing him around like a shot-put—at which point he stabs the stakes into my arms._

_Jump over him—and have him throw one into my back._

_Dodge to the left or right—and deal with the throw again._

_Leap back, and then step forward, using his head like a football—hoping he doesn't roll to a crouch and stab for my legs and stomach._

_Drop to one knee and punch him as he lands—I don't see how he can even anticipate that._

The Russian dropped to one knee just as it looked like Marco was about to lunge—

Marco's own thought process was—_He knows that humans can dodge a throwing knife if expecting it. We both know a vampire can do the same, therefore, we both know it won't do me any good to throw, so the assuming is that I won't, _so he did.

Both stakes landed squarely in the vampire's shoulders, setting him ablaze. The vampire pushed off one foot and whirled to put out the flames, and as he did so, Marco pulled out another handgun—a small .22, and fired.

The vampire had every intention of ignoring the blasts until he felt the bullets land, and knew what Cattalano had done—filled hollow-point bullets with holy water, and used candle wax to seal them. The bullets opened up and fragmented, filling his chest with shrapnel and holy water.

Marco fired six times without stopping, and fired six more before ejecting the cartridge and reloading with wooden bullets.

The vampire stopped and flared, never thinking it would have gotten to the point where he'd need to use a backup, his secret card for hundreds of years. But apparently technology had at last caught up to him. Cattalano aimed for right between the vampire's eyes, and before he fired, something went wrong—the vampire's eyes turned from yellow to black.

He reached for his chest, and kept his hand over it, and slowly, the bullet fragments leapt from his chest into the palm of his hand, and they gathered like dust on a mantle piece, and he hurled them at Marco, making the human drop to the ground and roll out of the way. The vampire grabbed both stakes and threw them at the human as well, keeping Marco off balance and keeping him from a clear shot.

"I have been around for hundreds of years, I was a _Cossack_. Do you truly think that I, unlike my brother, would be slow enough to not learn _magic_?"

Willow was monitoring the battle, ready to insert herself to Marco's aid. She put the shield up around him, and against his orders, concentrated on it lest he needed her.

Cassie watched Willow's face anxiously, looking for even the slightest change in expression. She never liked the idea of Marco facing off against whatever the First had in store for him—especially since she had dug up Mikhail's brother—alone, despite the threat to their parents. She struggled to stay perfectly still, keeping her breathing even and not pacing the length and breadth of the room.

Unfortunately, she couldn't keep from mentally hopping from one foot to the other, or her soul twisting into knots with worst-case scenarios.

Willow's eyes snapped opened and fixed on Cassie. Monitoring the situation with Marco had made her sensitive to the thoughts of everyone in the apartment, especially the blood relative.

"Cassie, if you don't stop it, I'm going to ask Kennedy to move you out of the apartment, the quick way."

"Huh?"

Kennedy smiled. "That means I'd throw you out the door."

Cassie started—the attitude was a little rough for the redhead.

Willow took a calming breath and explained, "I have to be mentally open to track Marco. You worrying distracts me."

Cassie bit her lip. "Sorry."

Amanda, who'd been talking to Melissa about having the ability to level quarterbacks with a single blow, came over and drew Cassie away from the witch. "Cassie, why don't you come over here and calm Mel down a little, she's being really jittery."

Mel smiled. Her? Nervous? _Give me a break! Oh well, I have to take care of the grownups now._

Cassie knew Amanda was using the kid as a distraction, and she was grateful. In fact, Melissa's broad smile and the twinkle in her eyes were additional warning signs that the excuse was as flimsy as Playboy negligee.

A knock came at the door, and Cassie flew to meet it, hoping that it was Marco.

Amanda got to the door first, blocking Cassie's path. "And if it's a Bringer who wants to stab through the door and impale you?"

"Sorry, I didn't think of that…why did you?"

She smiled. "I think like Marco does." She looked through the peephole, and—hoping it wasn't the First in some sort of guise, she opened it wide, ready to strike.

It was a brunette of medium build, with hair going down to her shoulder blades, dressed in what she knew as light black camouflage body armor. She had dark eyes—so dark she couldn't tell if they were blue or brown.

"This is the Cattalano place?"

"Yes, and you are?"

"Unimportant right now. Where are Marco and Cassie Catalano?"

"Why are you asking?"

She sighed. "I have little patience for this right now, we're tracking down an international threat, and they might be the bait we need to get things in motion."

"And who are you, Homeland Security?"

"No, I'm a lot more dangerous."

Willow stood from the couch and peeked around Amanda's flowing red hair. "What are you doing _here_?"

Marco let the vampire talk while he tried to think through his next move, not to mention what other abilities he might have. He had exchanged emails with Buffy, and had gotten details of her exchange with the Preacher, realizing that his eyes had also turned black.

_Which means this one is _also _charged by the First? But wait a sec, wasn't the "Son of a Preacher man's" eyes turning back right before he died? I couldn't have hurt him that bad, could I? Or is it the type of "Hello, my name is Willow, and I'm about to end the world," type of black eyes? In which case, _HELP!

"You know, I'm not just killing you because of my brother—I know your sister did that, but you also killed my mentors, the invincible one, and Nuala."

Marco blinked. "You mean Bob was your mentor as well?"

The vampire nodded, letting himself heal. "My brother was into the little picture— breed, nest, move on, hoping to rid the world of humans over hundreds of years. But they were into a bigger picture, especially when Bob gave Saddam the _real_ weapons of war."

He smiled. "You mean weapons of mass destruction?"

"No, I mean weapons that the United States will never be able to detect. I mean weapons that will be dispersed through the United Nations to every country no one wants them to get to—he was in the middle of the deal until you killed him."

"Great, now you're telling me I saved the free world, how nice."

"Free world? No, it's not free, just expensive. You've heard of the food for oil program? It's a sham; Bob was using Saddam to buy off UN members for him; Saddam got the money, and Bob got influence by giving oil all over the place."

Marco blinked. Saddam Hussein's regime had only fallen two months before, and the Iraqi "president" had disappeared into the abyss. The best anyone could tell, the five months spent bickering at the UN gave Hussein enough time to smuggle his WMDs into Syria. "So what was Bob going to do then?"

"Keep the UN from doing anything by making the French and the Russians the logjam, as well as Kofi Anon, through his son. It worked even after his death, it seems."

"I guess you have no ambitions to recreate his work?"

"Buffy" appeared beside him. "No, but I do."

Cattalano wanted to turn to It, the First, but didn't want to take his eyes off the big scary vampire. "You and what army?"

"Mikhail's," the Russian answered.

The human smiled. Mikhail the Bear had spent centuries nesting all over the world. They were all trained in the style of Nuala, the Slayer Vampire, who had taught Mikhail and his brother.

Marco nodded. "Let me guess, you're going to send hit teams out after the new Slayers, and then go after Buffy's SWAT team of the fully-trained Slayers, then go after the rest of the world? I can see it now, the First as the General, you as the Captain, the Bringers as the Lieutenants, and the vampires as the foot soldiers."

"It gets better," the First answered. "We've already sent teams into North Korea, China, Cuba and Iran. Negotiations are already under way to turn the political 'undesirables' into vampires to add to our army."

Marco did some numbers crunching. "There are about a million starving people in North Korea, last time I checked, starved by the government. That's a lot of undesirables."

"Exactly. Soon, nothing will stop us."

Lightning struck from a clear evening, hitting the vampire with thousands of watts of energy, enough to light up the Empire State Building for a minute. The vampire, stunned, teetered on the edge of the roof, and fell over, landing in an alleyway with a resounding _thud_.

Marco and the First looked at each other, and then to the rooftop next door. There stood a man who was easily six-feet tall, with brown hair, brown eyes, pale skin, broad forehead, a build like a medium-sized wrestler, and he cradled an odd looking weapon in his arms.

"Not really," he stated. "We've been tracking you people down for years. About time we did, too. We had a lead on you twice, and then they mysteriously died, now we know where they died," he added, looked at Marco. "Good work, but damned inconvenient."

Marco straightened. "I guess you know what this is," he waved to the First.

"Yes, but I didn't know Buffy had died."

Marco paused for a minute before saying, "Well, Captain, maybe you should've asked her." He looked at the First. "See what you get for dabbling in international politics? You've already pissed off the US army."

The First beamed. "That's why I brought my own army. I was hoping to get someone over here, but I didn't think I'd hit the jackpot. This isn't over yet."

"I didn't think so, but now my parents are out of play, aren't they?"

It frowned. "Our Russian friend likes playing to rules. I'm going to have to break him of that habit, so yes, they are. I can't afford to piss him off by sending my own Bringers after you instead of his vampires, so yes, they're safe. Damn it."

The First transformed itself into its true form—a large, horned creature, and disappeared over the side, following the vampire

Marco headed for the stairs, picking up his fallen weapons. "Come on, It's going to be pissed, and probably already recharging vampire boy as we speak." He grabbed and held the door for the soldier. "By the way, Captain Finn, it's a pleasure to meet you. I've heard a lot via Buffy and company."

He smiled. "Thanks, and call me Riley."

"Done, and your wife?"

"In your apartment right now."


	5. An Axis of Evil

**Chapter 4:**

**An Axis of Evil**

Captain Riley Finn's wife, Samantha, was not unattractive, a brunette of medium build, with certain hints of a firm body beneath—firm as in "I can kick your ass with ease" capacity, as well as the "Yes, my husband's a lucky man" variety. Marco was able to see both, putting the emphasis on the one that could kill him easier.

"Riley!" Willow exclaimed. She jogged over and hugged the larger man firmly.

Finn smiled, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Hi, Willow. What—"

"Long story," Marco told him. "Let's just say we're all one big happy family around here. And I mean the Chinese takeout meal. That one's a witch, that one's a Slayer, that one's a Slayer, that's my future fiancée, Amanda, also a Slayer; that one—well, she's just my sister, and Spike you know, I'm sure to your regret, please ignore him, he's already died once lately."

Willow disengaged and said, "What are you doing here?"

"You might want to sit down, this could take awhile."

"Since 9/11," Riley began, "the US government, or at least the Human Research Initiative, was certain that something was wrong. Everyone thinks that the two 'faces' in the fire of the airplane impact of September 11th were merely computer generated images, hoaxes made later on; however, we knew better, because we used CGI to clean up the footage, removing both faces, 'proving' it a hoax. We didn't want to voice our ideas that it was the work of demons—or at least, a demon-aided attack. We know the attack was al-Qaeda, we just didn't know how deep the demon involvement was."

Sam picked up where her husband left off. "The thing is, we were able to identify one of two faces in the smoke as someone hanging around the United Nations—which is the advantage of having the US government run the security. We actually ran the faces through facial identification, and when Homeland Security connected the camera images, we found him. And we also found images of him scattered throughout the country in a direct line for California, but the trail stopped short of Sunnydale. Then he disappeared. We assumed that he had been taken out by Buffy, and nothing could be gotten out of him, so that was a dead end."

Riley continued. "We found out that he was a regular visitor to the Secretary General on a regular basis, but we could never figure out what it was about. We bugged his office, but it was too late to do anything about it."

"That part is, by the way, completely classified," she added. "We've had to bug a dozen different diplomats in order to get a hint of what was going on, and that your Russian was kind enough to explain on the roof."

Cassie looked at Marco. "The secret weapon was Mikhail's brother?"

He nodded. "Who knows magic, and who seems to be charged by the First, a la the Preacher man. Apparently, Bob was working to manipulate the UN to be an essentially useless body, using Saddam Hussein's oil-for-food program to bribe members of the French and Russian government, as well as Kofi Anon's son, which we can assume also means the Secretary General is involved."

"I heard that Kurds were complaining about such things for years," Amanda noted. "I guess they'll be taken seriously now…assuming the scam will be revealed in a timely manner."

"I think they're working on it as we speak," Sam added.

"The thing is," Marco added, "is that there's something bigger involved, like sending vampires to the political prisoners of Cuba, China, North Korea and Iran, so they can get an army they'll use to take out the Slayers yet to be collected, and then the Slayers Buffy's already got on her side."

Riley nodded. "And by the sound of it, they've brought some of the army here to New York, possibly even all of it—if I were them, I'd stay around the UN."

Sam nodded. "Right. After all, Turtle Bay used to be a slaughterhouse."

"Not to mention the fact that their boys are there, Anon and company," Spike added.

"One problem," Cassie noted, "where exactly would they be? It's not like you can hide a small army, or even a large one, around Turtle Bay. You'd at least need someplace to put these people in the daytime. And eventually, just any sewer isn't going to do."

Spike lit up a cigarette. "That's true. The cagey bastards aren't gonna just sit 'round the sewers hoping that some plumber isn't gonna come down and trip over 'em."

"Which means what?" Kennedy asked. "Vampires in Sunnydale at least hung around graves and cemeteries, what would be the equivalent here?"

Amanda laughed. "We'll send you to Queens; we have at least eleven major cemeteries, and the Jackie Robinson Expressway cuts through one of them—that's how big they are. However, none of them are near Turtle Bay that I know of."

Riley raised his hand. "There may be another way. The shipyards across the bay are the end point to an access tunnel in the UN. They could come and go through there."

Cassie laughed. "You mean the vampires could be hiding in Greenpoint?"

Marco leaned back in his chair. "Wouldn't it just be easier for the bastards to move in where Mikhail had his own place? From what I heard tell, they were concentrated over in Red Hook the last time—it's a large industrial area, replete with old warehouses, factories, and since the mob moved out, I'm certain a lot of those places closed down. We should probably start looking for unseemly body counts lately, just to narrow it down." He looked to his sister. "You might want to start coordinating with your local gangs, and make sure the lizards and the pussycats know that we're calling their reserve numbers again."

Riley nodded. "I can also make a phone call, have a team down here in an hour."

Spike scoffed. "With what, soldier boy? Machineguns and electro guns again?"

Finn glared at him. "Flamethrowers and napalm."

The cigarette dipped low. "Oh. That might work."

Melissa, who looked almost completely clueless, said "What's a Coffee Anon?"

Marco looked at his watch and said, "Cassie, Spike, I think it's time that Melissa should head to bed, her own bed, in her own house. Willow, you think you could transport her there? I would hate for my sister to get eaten on the way."

Willow nodded. "Right back." She looked down at Melissa. "Time to go for a ride, Sweety." They popped out of existence together.

Marco smiled. "At least there goes the peanut gallery."

Spike puffed on the cig to buy time to think. "Getting back to me point, just who's going to lead this attack? Willow? She'll do great for the magic bit against this guy, but the hand-to-hand'll be pretty hard. Kennedy's too new—no offense, luv. I barely survived a hand-to-hand with Nuala and she didn't know magic. Marco? You?" He scoffed. "Fire's good for handlin' the minions, but for the big bad, he'll prol'ly just wave his hand and make them disappear, or make his own little temporary shield."

Marco sighed. "My standard hatred of Spike aside, I'd like to suggest that we avoid any direct contact, or at least make as little as possible. The next direct confrontation with this schmuck had better be our last, so we should make the best of it. Personally, I'd like to be able to find where he and his little army are and blow the roof off the place—literally, and in broad daylight."

Kennedy cleared her throat. "And what makes you think that Willow can't counter the magic and I can't handle the fighting? You think Spike's right about that?"

He smiled, stood, and walked over to her before he threw his punch.

Kennedy blocked the punch, and automatically answered with a right jab to the ribs, only Marco's block was already in motion before she even swung. His arm came down like a pendulum and swept the fist aside, jabbing his elbow into her face. He then swept her legs out from under her, and dropped to one knee, holding a stake at her throat.

"You can't even beat me, and he thinks like I do, and is charged by the First, and knows magic. If anyone's going to tackle him, it's going to be me, Amanda and Willow—Spike, if you want to try arguing with me, I wouldn't."

Spike smiled, putting his cigarette down. "You know, I never really got a chance to have a go at you."

Marco ran his fingers through his hair, pausing at the nape of his neck, just above one of his wooden knives. "Hey, after you tried to rape Buffy, I wanted to ashtray you, pal. So I wouldn't—"

Marco hurled the knife, nailed Spike center mass, just to the left of his heart.

"—make any suggestions."

Willow popped back into existence, where she was a moment ago. "I'm back. Did I miss anything?" She looked at Spike's chest. "Oh, I guess I did."

Amanda cleared her throat. "Anyway, may I ask how you tracked the Russian here?"

Sam smiled. "We knew that there was a brief incident of vampires here, and that the Cattalanos had something to do with it. We just didn't know how deep they were in until now."

Amanda smiled, smart enough not to ask who "we" was. "I'd say about hip deep."

Marco slid next to her, gently combing his fingers through her hair. "Sounds like a good description."

"How?"

Cassie smiled. "Well, first we had a small infestation in the neighborhood: a master vampire called Mikhail the Bear apparently decided that New York looked like a proper nesting ground for him. He ran into us, and didn't like what happened—we're friends with the local street gang/vigilante groups around here, and we trained them how to take out vamps. One night they came here—apparently figuring out that we were involved in their undoing, and we finished them—me, Marco, and the gangs."

Willow nodded. "Then Marco came to Sunnydale and helped us kill a super demon named Bob, and Marco killed him darned near by himself, smacking him with liquid nitrogen. And then there was a super-vampire named Nuala, and he killed her too, by staking and beheading her."

Riley blinked. "This Nuala wouldn't happen to be a tall, redheaded vampire that occasionally speaks with a brogue?"

Marco smiled. "Ah, you've met her?"

He looked dead at Amanda. "We ran her face through the recognition program, and wound up with your friend here as the closet possible match. Kofi Anon met with this Nuala not long after the one you called Bob disappeared, made an arrangement to meet her through Wolfram and Hart in Los Angeles. What probably happened was that Anon sent a hit man out to get revenge on whoever killed Bob, and used Nuala to make it happen. I suppose when she didn't get back to him, he gave up."

Willow smiled. "It could be that Marco was merely out of the country for the better part of a year after. And the First certainly wasn't going to make any moves to help Bob; It was busy with Its own agenda."

"Like ending the world," Marco noted. "Again. What is it with these bastards and ending the world? They keep getting their ass kicked over and over again." He sighed. "Anyway, we've got a relative of Nuala here, let's say. And? Any relation is about a thousand years old, and Nuala was a tough old cookie, so what? Right now what we need is a Vampire Slayer Tac Team, and we need it now."

"Tack?" Willow queried.

"Tactical," Cassie replied. She'd spent _way_ too much time around her brother.

"That's a nice try," Sam answered, "but the Slayers were unable to beat the Preacher without the use of a super-weapon, and he had practically no skill at all."

Kennedy, Willow and Spike blinked, shocked. "How did you know that?" Kennedy asked. "I mean, you didn't—"

"Know?" Sam smiled. "We knew after the fact, Kennedy. Did you think that all the Slayers were merely faces from the void? You remember the shy retiring redheaded Slayer who survived? Her father works with Coffer Black."

Marco and Amanda gasped as one, the others merely looked confused.

Amanda looked to the shocked ones. "Mr. Black is head of the CIA covert operations. Read Bob Woodward's _Bush at War_."

Spike shrugged. "So?"

"The Soviet Union knew he was so dangerous that they tried to kill him twice. He killed one of the assassins himself, had the other one taken out, and then their families mysteriously died soon after." Marco looked at the vampire with a long, meaningful look that only Spike would understand. "He scares _me_."

Spike shivered, raised the trembling cigarette to his lips, then slowly lowered it, snuffing the half-smoked cig in a dish.

Finn smiled. "Black is the CIA's top agent in all manner of covert activity, and I'd say his last name is appropriate, considering that the army unit I'm with is under his command."

Amanda nodded thoughtfully before raising her hand. "Point of order—how long has the government known about vampires?"

"1864," Sam replied. "Grant and Sherman had big problems with the vampires during the Civil War, but Sherman's March to the Sea damn near eradicated all the Southern Vampires as Lee's secret weapons. The Human Research Initiative was founded that year."

A moment of silence fell upon the group.

"_Anyway_," Cassie said. "What about your informant?"

"She sent us emails every so often to update us on the situation, in case it got out of hand," Riley answered. "We had monitors on the Hellmouth in case the vampires got loose, and if that happened, well, there would have been a very big hole where Sunnydale was, no matter what the outcome of the battle. We would have razed the high school, entered the Hellmouth, planted a nuke, and then run very, very fast, all in daylight."

Kennedy: "Why take out the high school, though?"

Riley smiled. "We would have planted the nuke in the middle of direct sunlight, to make sure none of the vampires could meddle with it. We would have had constant thermal scans to make sure no Bringers would be on approach to deal with the bomb instead, and then detonate."

The younger Cattalano nodded and leaned back on the couch. "Okay, so you do know what you're talking about. And yes, the Preacher man was an unskilled, second-rate hack with a talent for killing people."

"Actually," Sam noted, "he was a wanted serial killer who fell off the FBI's radar only a few months ago, right after Faith was broken out of a state prison. He was thrown out of the seminary for physically abusing women who came around the parish."

Spike, a one-time Anglican said, "Ah, the Papists didn't keep him _because_ of that?"

Sam looked at him. "He beat up primarily on nuns."

"Oh."

Sam looked to Marco. "Last time he was seen, it was in a truck moving through California."

"Oh." He cleared his throat and continued. "So, he wasn't very skilled at fighting, just strong. The problem becomes you're right—our friend Igor is skilled, charged, and talented in witchcraft. All he needs is a low level shield like the one Willow gave me, and _I'm _toast in three moves. That's assuming he doesn't want to show off and kick the crap out of me for a while. We send in a Slayer SWAT team, they may last a little longer. If we can import Buffy and her super scythe, we might have a chance."

Riley shook his head. "From what we know of the deals going on in Iran, North Korea, China and Cuba, they're almost completely finished—we have a few contacts in the Wolfram and Hart world, and they're saying that the negotiations are almost done. We need to cut down all of them, soon. There are teams in place to remove the negotiating parties before the deals can be signed, but if the core army is still in place, that's not going to do much good. In fact, after the teams wipe out the Wolfram and Hart lawyers on scene, the First will probably just scatter its army to those countries anyway and make their new army, contract or no. We can only assume that much of the army is gathered here, in New York. And even if it isn't, Igor, as you called him, is."

Spike sighed. "And what's that going to do? Kill the army, they can breed another. Kill Igor only and you've still got the army."

"The same principle behind killing Osama," Amanda explained. "Kill off the more experienced, the system isn't able to function as well as when you have the experienced old timers in charge. It's why Israel kills only the top leaders before working their way down."

"Although in this case," Sam added, "killing Igor will be more like blowing up a mobile training camp. And we can, at the very least, assume he's got an inner core group that trains all the others somewhere close to him. Mikhail the Bear, from what we know, would nest, cluster a family, train a replacement to be his equal, and then move on to repeat the cycle. Estimates are a 50-man core group, followed by a twenty or fifty-vamp platoon behind each one of them."

Cassie balked at the numbers suddenly floating in her head. "You mean he's got somewhere between a thousand and twenty-five _hundred_ vampires?"

"At a low estimate."


	6. Greenwich Village of the Damned

**Chapter Five:**

**Greenwich Village** **of the Damned**

**Or:**

"**Certain Sections of Brooklyn**…"

**Or:**

**God Sent Me**

"Oh come out ye God-darn vamps, come out and fight me like a man, show your girl how you would mow us down in Hellll-A. Show her how the Buffy girls made you run like hell away, from the green and lovely lanes of the old Hellll-mouth."

"Don't you _ever_ shut up?"

Cattalano stopped and smiled down the empty Brooklyn street. "Hi, Igor, how are you?"

The vampire landed on the pavement of Red Hook, growling slightly. "Don't you have anything better to do than to sing variations on 'Come Out Ye Black and Tans'?"

"No." As far as he could tell, he was the only living thing around there for blocks. The vampire and he were alone in a rather dead part of town, figuratively speaking—occupied by plenty of old Mafia-owned industries that had been shut down after Gotti and company went into meltdown, and totally industrial.

"Ever see _Casablanca_?'

Igor nodded. "So?"

"As Strasser asked Rick about invading New York, Rick answered that there were 'certain sections of the Bronx I wouldn't recommend you invade.' You just entered the wrong part of Brooklyn, pal."

"We shall see." The vampire's eyes floated down Marco's body, noting his light windbreaker and the sword at his side. "You expect that to work on me?"

Cattalano shook his head. "Only if you have Bringers around here."

Igor laughed firmly. "You won't need it."

"Good, it'll be annoying." Marco quickly detached the belt and tossed it to his left. "Now, where were we?"

Igor threw himself at Cattalano and swung with a left backhand, a right roundhouse, and a right kick just in case Marco dropped, waiting for his back to be toward him. Marco instead dropped to a crouch and quickly rolled to the side, expecting all of the above, rolled back and kicked, firmly, into Igor's knee, breaking it. Before Igor fully acknowledged the pain from his knee, he pulled his right leg down to steady himself, and Marco rammed one of his turpentine knives directly between Igor's legs before rolling away, to his feet.

Igor doubled over in pain and closed his legs, putting out the brief flare. He quickly extracted the pieces with a bit of magic and whirled on Marco, hurling the ruined knife at him. Marco sidestepped the blade, half-expecting it, drawing out two wooden knives from his jacket, holding them as though ready for combat.

"It's been a while since I've had someone who thinks like me," Igor said, concentrating on healing his knee and his groin with a touch of his magic. They were already starting to reform, but he was rusty on his healing spells—he hadn't needed them for two centuries.

"It's a first for me. By the way, how many of you did Nuala train?" Marco thought about Igor's next move, expecting a different attack pattern, probably a simple left-right hook combination, or a left-feint and right hook combo, just to test how much force he needed.

"Only me and my brother."

"Why the two?"

Igor smiled. "She killed the rest of them on the first day of training. They were weak."

Marco leapt at Igor, and the vampire flinched, unprepared, and reflexively stepped back on his left knee, and it snapped again under the sudden pressure. Marco stopped as he collapsed, grinning as he hurled a knife into the vampire's undamaged knee, coming up with a new knife before stepping back.

Igor growled in pain as his eyes briefly turned black. He pulled away the knife and broke it in one hand. He blinked his eyes clear again and stood on both legs, and launched himself at Marco, using a right feint and a left hook. Cattalano had expected a different feint, but it didn't matter, he did the exact same thing he would have without it—he used the time of the feint to judge where he should move next, and he ducked and weaved under the left hook and rammed one knife into Igor's left triceps and the other into his gut before throwing himself to one side. Marco rolled to his feet, two more knifes in hand.

Igor roared, but ignored both hurts. He threw himself into the building in front of him, pushing off the wall and flying at Marco. The human dropped and rolled forward, under Igor, and came to his feet as the vampire whirled at him. Marco didn't move as he observed the vampire's body—totally undamaged—somehow, both of the stakes had disappeared, and only the vampire's clothing was damaged.

Igor lunged with his left and Marco simply dropped forward, to one knee, and rammed the left-handed knife into the left side of Igor's chest.

Igor's left hand dropped, clipping Marco on the back of the head. The human dropped forward and rolled, feeling a mild concussion coming on.

Marco rolled to his feet halfway into the street, and unfortunately, his legs weren't as steady as he would have liked them to have been.

Cattalano blinked his eyes clear.

His stake was sticking out of the vampire's chest…

Right where his heart should have been.

Marco reached into a pocket and pulled out a rosary. With a twist of his wrist it wrapped around his fingers, and he tightened them into a fist.

Igor's smile dimmed. "Going back to basics, are we?"

"You have no idea."

Marco hurled the blade for Igor's right side, and the vampire sidestepped it before charging, deliberately going for Marco's right. Cattalano reached for another weapon, and Igor kept coming.

Igor ran right into the next blow on purpose, believing that nothing Marco had could really hurt him.

Marco's next blow was the flat side of a crucifix.

Igor's face sizzled as Marco rammed his kidneys with the rosary-clad left jab and torqued for a right-hook with the cross before leaping back.

Unfortunately, Igor struggled through the pain and grabbed Marco's right wrist, avoiding the cross, and twisted, hurling him through the air and into the side of a building. Marco twisted in midair to distribute the force of the blow, but that only contained the damage to the left side of his body, cracking three ribs.

Marco dropped to the ground hard, hitting his head on the pavement. He was certain he'd have a concussion by the end of the evening, assuming he wasn't dead.

Igor sprinted and kicked Marco in the stomach, breaking something inside him relating to organ tissue. Cattalano coughed up blood.

_And that was just from a stomach blow, if he had kicked my chest, it would have just collapsed. God only knows what shape it's in now._

Marco stabbed Igor in the foot with the sharpened end of the cross, and stabbed him in the thigh. Igor ignored it and stomped on his calf.

"I will break you slowly, over time, for your arrogance."

Igor walked away, laughing, intending to stretch out his death until just before dawn.

Marco reached for the inside of his jacket and came out with two phials, drove the nail through the cork in the top of each, shook them, and acted like he was about to throw them.

Igor heard this, turned, and cocked a brow. "And?"

Marco groaned. "Never mind. Keep the holy water," and tossed them TO the vampire.

Igor caught the test tubes and they exploded. The flash of nitroglycerin blinded him briefly, long enough for Marco to attack, throwing knife after knife from inside his coat, and from the neck sheathes, from up his arm, and from his pockets.

Igor had flames all over his body, and he whirled, putting out each flame in turn. He roared with pain and rage, and leapt for Marco—

And flew into the building in the opposite direction as someone grabbed his ankle in mid-air and twisted, hurling him like a discus.

Igor's face broke the wall, and he was about to attack when he felt a sword go through his body.

The vampire ripped himself from the wall and turned on his assailant.

Melissa smiled and said "Hi there."

He raised a brow. "You did that?"

"Yes."

"You're not a threat, you're a snack. But Marco first."

Melissa jumped him, and Igor lightly threw her aside. He turned back to Marco and had an encounter with a post office mailbox across his face, knocking him off his feet.

Igor felt his teeth, and found his canines missing. He looked up to see an angry-looking redhead in front of him, holding a long wooden pole with sharpened ends.

"If you touch him, I will kill you."

Igor's eyes narrowed. "I have the army here, child."

"Oh? Where would they be?"

His eyes flared. "Come!"

They came up from the sewers for miles around, one after the other, long spears and iron shield at their sides. They marched in military-straight lines with coordinated footwork to put _Riverdance_ to shame. And they _marched_, they marched like the Roman days of old, down the alleys and side streets, two, or as many as five abreast, each line never longer than the width of the street Amanda stood on. And they marched onto the street, their lines crossing and merging, until they each hit the end opposite from which they came and they stopped, as one, and turned on their heel in a right turn so exactly timed that engineers at NASA would marvel.

Their faces were bared, their teeth straight, their postures erect, their lances at their sides, they looked like the Knights Templar or the Teutons ready for battle against Alexander Nevsky. There had to be at least two thousand of them, all ready to drink her blood.

Amanda nodded her appreciation. "How Mordor-esque."

Igor gave her a toothy grin. "Yes, and now we're going to play a little Helm's Deep."

She frowned. "Aww, and I wanted to play a little _Apocalypse Now_."

And then, swooping in from under the 59th Street Bridge from upper Manhattan, sweeping down the East River, came the two scariest notes outside of _O Fortuna_—the opening notes to _Flight of the Valkyries._

Igor barely heard it at first, but as the notes chewed up airspace, the picture in his mind formed with crystal clarity. His eyes widened in terror as he brushed past Amanda, running toward his men. The only thing he could come up with right now to save his men was fifty feet away.

As he met his first line of defense, the helicopter was upon them, coming down the street, and it was too late.

The gunship fired its napalm.

The rockets hit the ground with devastating effect, vaporizing rows of vampires in one flash of light apiece. The rocket impacts drew closer to Igor, and he didn't care, grabbing an iron spear from one of his front men, bellowing "Disperse!"

And then he disappeared into a ball of fire.

The stragglers were quickly being picked off by the anti-tank Gatling gun mounted on the military gunship—each burst enough to blow apart a jeep.

As the flames subsided a little, Amanda could see Igor, standing in the glow of the fire as the heat bent around him and his own personal shield. The iron lance still in hand, he hefted it and hurled it. The metal rod pierced the helicopter's bulletproof cockpit glass, through the pilot, his chair, and the roof of the helicopter, damaging the engine. It floated off.

"Dragons!" bellowed a voice from atop of a roof. Igor looked up at Riley Finn. "Present arms!"

"Tigers!" Sam bellowed from the opposite roof. "Present arms!"

"Fire!" they ordered at once.

Flaming crossbow bolts launched from the two buildings bracketing the remains of the vampire army, picking off the scattered remnants until lines were organized enough to shield themselves; once the shields were up, the husband and wife army team brought their tazer rifles to bear and fired against the metal shields, the voltage high enough to turn the now-electrified shield-bearers to flame.

Igor looked at the madness around him and felt himself undone. There had to be payment for this. He summoned all his power and trained it on the two buildings, ready to level them at a thought.

And then he couldn't.

His power was there, the strength of magic, but it wasn't working.

He was being jammed.

Off in a side street, Willow chanted over and over and over again the same spell that had kept her from killing Jonathan and Andrew with a wave of her hand only a year before in the Magic Box.

"Hand to hand!" Riley called out.

Igor was about to join the fight when he realized that if his magic were being jammed, his shield would be down.

Up in a tower half a mile away, Cassie smiled behind the scope of a .50 caliber Galil sniper rifle, filled with hollowpoint rounds filled with Killer of the Dead and sealed with wax.

She fired directly into Igor's back. The force spun him around as though he'd been hit by a wrecking ball. Two more bullets hit Igor before he leapt away, heading toward Amanda. He scooped up a metal lance along the way.

"Do you think that wood will work against me, child?"

Amanda's eyes narrowed. "It worked against your brother."

Igor bellowed and charged.

Three more snipers bullets fired into his chest, punching a hole through the upper left quadrant and out his back.

Igor staggered backwards, and paused to let his chest seal up, and as it sealed from back to front, Amanda saw the organs that were replaced…

The heart wasn't one of them.

Amanda recalled a rare medical condition where the organs of the human body were mirrored, opposite from the side of the chest they should actually be on.

Igor's heart was on the right side of this chest.

Amanda smiled.

Igor attacked, and Amanda let him come. She dropped her staff and grabbed the spear as he swung. She twisted and hurled the spear away, turning into a spin-kick that snapped Igor's head back with a resounding crack.

Igor blinked. He hadn't been kicked that hard since he first trained with Nuala. He smiled. "Let's see how well you play against my _skill_."

The vampire whirled, going for a left roundhouse backhand. Instead of blocking it, Amanda noted that he pivoted on the right foot, leaving the left foot in the air. If she blocked the backhand, the kick would be unchecked.

Amanda nearly stepped back two paces, and when he kicked out, she caught the ankle a good two feet in front of her. She pulled back, yanking Igor off his feet. In mid-throw, as Igor passed her body, he grabbed for her with his right hand, and managed to catch her left hand as she struck.

She drove a stake directly into his heart.

Amanda followed Igor to the ground, pressing the stake through his body, holding it steady. The vampire's eyes turned black, and glowed with the intensity of an ultraviolet light bulb as his body strained against the forces of death straining at it. He had been charged with the power of the First, gifted with his ability to weave enchantments, and being eaten away by killed of the dead in his system as well as a stake in his heart.

The vampire turned to dust…

As the ashes were about to blow away, what looked like an electrical current fired up from his heart, connecting all the ashes, and pulling them back together again into a coherent form.

"No," he groaned, slowly pulling the stake out of his heart. His eyes flashed a moment, blasting Amanda away, and his body turned to ash once more, only to coalesce once again into a person. He pulled the stake out of his heart, falling to the ground.

Zeng Nyugen, head of the Dragons, attacked. He had been wary of indulging in any more vampire play after the last grand battle to defeat the vampire plague of Red Hook with Igor's brother.

And now, slashing with his grandfather's sword from World War II—a samurai blade over a hundred years old but as sharp as the first day it was pounded into solid form—he thought of Marco a few hours ago when he was first contacted with this new threat.

"_Zeng, hi, Marco, we've got a problem and I was hoping the lizards were up to it."_

"_The Dragons."_

"_Whatever."_

"_What is it?"_

"_The sequel to the Vampire Plague of Red Hook."_

"_Oh?"_

"_It's called the Vampire Plague of Red Hook, Part II: he has a brother."_

"_Not again. You bringing your demon friend around?"_

"_Nope."_

"_I'm not stupid enough to have my people fed to a vampire hoard…what a sec, how many vamps are we talking?"_

"_About three thousand."_

"_Go to hell."_

"_Hey, the kitty cats already went along with it. I guess they can have all the fun."_

_Zeng thought a moment. "Like hell they will. We'll be there." He stopped and called his friend Miguel, the leader of Los Tigres. "You joining up with Marco's band of lunacy?"_

"_Yes, but only because you are."_

_Zeng paused. "He just called and told me that you were going into this."_

"_No, he called me and told me you jumped at the chance."_

"_Son of a—"_

The vampire jumped him.

Marco was dying, and he knew it. His body wouldn't react to his commands, and that was that, no more Marco. While Willow neutralized 90 of Igor's magic—removing it as a tactical weapon—Cassie worked the sniper rifle, Spike covered Cassie's back, Riley, Sam, Kennedy and Melissa finished off the grand vampire army, and Amanda killed the master vampire, he would simply fade away into the night.

_Well, after all, I'm not needed by anyone. Amanda's faring well, everyone's alive, except for me, and all will be well, except for the bother of a funeral._

Amanda rammed the stake into Igor's heart, and Marco smiled, content to die in peace, knowing that his love had one over the thing that killed him.

Until he saw her flying away from the reformed vampire who pulled out the wood from his heart.

"No…" Marco groaned. He coughed up some blood, and his thoughts turned to that exact fluid—bloody minded he would be. Amanda could not win against something that would not die. He had faith in her ability to kill all the vampires in the world, but not if they couldn't actually die. Eventually, he would kill her—she would become tired, make a slip, and that would be the end.

Marco forced his left arm to move, reaching for the curb, praying for the ability to turn himself over.

And that was the last of his strength. He couldn't move once more.

_Darn, and what was the First worried about?_

"_You see, you're what I like to call a saint in training—you don't believe in your own limits, so they don't apply. You make your own pathetic reality, only it's a scary reality because you enforce it on the rest of us. You say that you are whatever you need to be, and you are."_

And then that one thought occurred to him. He was always what he needed to be.

And he needed to be alive.

Melissa wasn't doing much of anything, and quickly became bored with the big vampire.

Maybe one of the smaller ones would be more fun!

She scampered towards the embers of the vampire assault team and grabbed a manhole cover from the street before she twirled and took off one of their heads with it. The cover bounced and decapitated another.

Yes, this was far more fun.

She ripped a stop sign from the ground, post still attached, and swung it like an axe, cutting off the heads of vampires left and right, laughing in triumph all the while. She had a vision of herself as Gimli, mowing down Orcs with his own axe, and wished that kind of mythology had been real.

She would have made a heck of a Dunedain Ranger.

Igor rose, his body covered in sweat from exertion and the poison.

"You poisoned me…" he growled. "Killer…of the…dead."

Amanda nodded as she rose from the ground. "And there's only one known antidote."

"The blood of a Slayer."

She nodded. "Come and get your medicine."

Igor slowly moved for her, and then lunged with a right uppercut. Amanda quickly did the calculations, and figured that he would learn that she could dodge any fist blow, and so the payoff would be the second shot. She weaved to her left, around the fist, and dove, expecting him to sweep the right foot in anticipation of her ducking a kick.

Amanda leapt over the sweeping kick, grabbed the wooden staff on her way down, and rolled away with it to her first, twirled and launched the wood like a spear into his chest before he was even finished with the uppercut.

The spear went through him, lodging halfway out of his body. The vampire stood there, dumbfounded, as his body once more began to disintegrate on him. He reformed, and concentrated solely on staying in one piece. He broke off the staff sticking out of his chest and ignored the rest. His spells couldn't work externally, but they could keep him together. He would only have the ability to stay alive, and his strength would be reduce, but the redhead wouldn't give him the time to pull out the rest, of that he was sure.

She'd have to die first.

He charged her, and she weaved, only he anticipated it and grabbed her arm. He twisted, hurling her off to the opposite side of the street from Marco. She hit the wall face first, falling to the ground. She came back up on her feet without much of a problem, and she was ready for him this time.

By the time she faced him once more, he had finished pulling out the weapon that had killed his brother, but would not kill him.

"Enough," he snapped. Igor stared at her, drawing the sources of his powers together to himself. His body surged with energy, and his hands and feet burst into white-hot flames, but were not consumed. "I can set myself on fire, and your charms won't protect you from that!"

Amanda scooped up Marco's cavalry sword, hoping to use it to buy her more time, but with flames that hot, the sword would melt at first contact, and it would buy her only seconds before the end, because even she was having trouble trying to figure out a way around that.

Suddenly, Igor froze, his body numb. In his peripheral vision, he saw something sticking out of his neck as he fell to his knees—it was a foot-long wooden throwing knife that had slipped between the cartilage of his spine and severed it at the C4 vertebrae, making him an instant paraplegic. He concentrated his powers on moving his limbs independently of the central nervous system, but nothing happened.

His eyes flicked to Amanda, closing in on him, and he focused his power into an eye-flash like that which had blasted her away before. A second later, a knife entered his occipital lobe—the part of the brain that processes vision—and his eyes went dark.

"No," he croaked.

Marco Cattalano, prone on the pavement, sighed after the exertion of throwing the last two knives.

Igor growled as his body suddenly moved, floating away from Amanda before both wooden instruments flew in opposite directions out of his neck. Magic created an aura around him as he healed himself and stood upright in a blink of an eye, both of his eyes a solid black.

He spared Marco a passing glance. He looked back to Amanda, still holding the sword with far more confidence than before. He laughed, certain he'd change that in a moment. He'd had enough of playing with these people. He would unleash his magic once and for all, and end these pathetic creatures—jamming or no jamming.

A cannon-like weapon sounded, and his chest felt like it had burst into flames. In fact, his magic was the only thing preventing that literal fate.

He turned, and Marco, grasping to a window ledge for support, had stood on his one good leg, holding a .50 caliber Desert Eagle.

"Wooden bullets," Marco explained. "Hollowpoints filled with holy water and sealed with church candle wax."

Two more bullets entered his chest before he could move, puncturing his heart.

Igor growled. His magic was now mostly restricted to keeping himself alive. The strain on his body was already beginning to wear on him.

Igor turned to see Amanda advancing on him. He leapt back, away from both of them, scooped up a rock from the street and whirled, hurling the stone for Marco's chest. The impact shattered several ribs and dropped him to the ground.

Igor looked to the sword in Amanda's hand and whirled, grabbed a lamp post from off the street, and whirled, intending to beat her to death with it. He swung…

And found that Amanda was directly in front of him, just a matter of inches, and her sword was already in mid-swing, cutting off his arm from his body. He was about to reach forward and break her neck, but the sword already came back, and cut his head off.

And the body turned to dust.

And stayed that way.

In the place of Igor's shattered body was the First, in Buffy form. She looked at Amanda and said, "Darn." She looked at Marco and smiled. "Well, at least I got _something_ out of this," and disappeared.

Amanda looked at the burning embers of the dying vampire army. They were fighting hard, but still dying in any event. They would probably all be killed in another fifteen minutes anyway.

That done, she ran to Marco's side. Cattalano was on his back, one side of his ribcage obviously caved in. His teeth were blood stained, and he vaguely resembled the blood-covered Bride from the opening of _Kill Bill_.

"Hi honey," he muttered. "I forgot to duck," he said, quoting Ronald Reagan after he was shot.

Amanda smiled. "You can joke, you must be alive."

He arched his brows. "How could you tell?" He turned his head and coughed, blood spilling onto the sidewalk. He paused a moment, and swallowed, trying to clear his mouth of the copper-like fluid.

He turned back to her and smiled weakly. "Wouldn't want to suffer from bad breath." He glanced behind her. "You got the bastard."

"_We_ got him."

He shook his head almost imperceptibly. "It's your kill, fair and square. I only softened him up a little for you… or more accurately, he softened up my rib cage. I screwed up, and now I get to die."

Amanda took his hand and leaned in close. "You're not going anywhere. You're going to stay here, with me…"

Marco reached up with his other hand, ignoring the flare of pain that racked his body with the motion, and gently caressed her cheek. "I love you, you know. For the last two years, I loved you. I ran to Sunnydale because I was afraid of it. I didn't want to let you get hurt by me, by what I could do. I wanted you safe and away from me—trouble follows me, you may have noticed. Don't cry for me—I screwed up."

She smiled. "I know. I knew all of it." She leaned down and kissed him on the lips for a long moment before pulling back to whisper. "And I don't care, I love you, and I'll wait two years, I'll wait five, and I'd follow you into Hell. You're mine, Cattalano, and you're not getting away from me."

Marco smiled, pleasantly surprised.

Then he blinked and his eyes rolled back into his head, and his head slumped over, his hand falling away from her face.

_To be continued._


End file.
